gluonpaul

The animation itself was superb, the voice acting was great (at least in the original Korean I dont know if there is a dubbed version in English) and the story line again very moving.

My only real gripe is that unlike train to busan when the social commentary was more nuanced and better integrated into the story here its a bit blunt with its point.

Still its both interesting and engaging to watch and I certainly recommend it if you liked Train to Busan.

I really dont know why this movie doesnt seem to be appealing to a lot of people I thought it was decent.

The acting was good, it kept up a suspenseful atmosphere and managed to make sure you felt tense at all the right times. It was a continuation (obviously) of the boy and while I will admit I thought the first one was better this was still a decent sequel.

My suggestion would be to give it a try at least, while i dont think this was a spectacular classic it was in my opinion an enjoyable watch and worth the time to give it a try.

I would say around a 5.5 would be fair for this movie, but a 6 just felt a little too generous. The thing is there is a lot to like in this, the movie has a lot of good callbacks to the original Ju-On and the first american remake, it is well acted and the story itself is very well told here.

The problem is as many critics have picked up it almost exclusively relies on jump scares. The thing is jump scares arent scary, you arent actually scared at all you are just startled. You go to a horror to experience the fear not to jump every now and again. Real fear needs a build up, needs you to see and empathize with the fear of characters on screen and needs a scary image which is not jumped on screen but brought in with foreboding.

Although the third film in the original american trilogy was generally meh, its first scene with a girl trapped in the closet had this in spades. The build up was slow, with the sounds of banging slowly moving towards them, the fear on the persons face as they cannot get the door open evokes fear in you and then the slow moving in of the ghost through the hatch in the ceiling. That is horror, but in this movie you will be watching it and then periodically a ghost jumps out of the dark or something. Thats it.

Such a shame as I say there really is a great and well told story in this movie but it just fails in the most fundamental part of a horror.