Seuseung-ui eunhye (2006) Reviews

• One of the best slasher movies I've ever seen...

  EvilSimen2007-08-31

  Woah. Like seriously, wow. I bought this movie at Borders Books a couple weeks ago because the cover looked cool and it's been shitting on my shelf since then building up a good weeks worth of dust before I decided to put this into my DVD player tonight and by god, I wasn't expecting to be hit this hard by this film. This movie, no, masterpiece managed to hit me at every level possible. It was gripping, it was scary, it was gory, it was disgusting, it was suspenseful, it was daring. I haven't felt this amount of uncomfortable edgyness while watching a movie in a long time. It really scared me. The strange part about this? All it simply is is a slasher movie. At it's core, that's what the movie tries to be... But it manages to be so much more than simply your cut and dry slasher movie. It manages to defy slasher movie convention at every turn. Instead of a bunch of assholes who you could never care about at all, this movie is casted with characters that each manage to go through their own ups and downs throughout the film and each manage to come together to form a cohesive whole of a character. They aren't cut and dry jocks or cheerleaders like you'd find in a modern, every day slasher. No, no, no. These are people, people with problems, people with lives, people who are tortured by their own lives. I managed to be gripped with each of their stories as they were told, including that of the most despicable of them. Then the ending occurs, and really manages to surprise me. I wasn't expecting it. I thought it had already gone through it's "twist" by then, but that twist turned out to be a red herring. I'm being vague simply because, well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone else who decides to pick up this brilliant slasher masterpiece. I'd say it's the best slasher I've seen since Halloween, my personal favorite horror movie and one of my two favorite movies ever made. It's that damn good. I'm definitely adding it to my top 10 horror movie list. I recommend you all pick this up, it was one of the best damn blind buys I've ever had.

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• Bloody Reunion

  Scarecrow-882009-04-10

  This was one hell of a reunion! What is supposed to be a celebration for a dying teacher turns out to be far more sinister, bloody, violent, and painful. A group of adults return to reunite with their school teacher and we discover that each member of her class have grown with boulder-sized chips on their shoulders, their lives deeply effected by her mistreatment of them. The teacher's husband hung himself after she gave birth to a male child with a hideously deformed face. Keeping him in her basement, several of the school kids(..appropriately those gathered at the reunion)often mock him, while one younger boy is kind to him..the film sets up that this particular child(..who was actually criticized by the teacher for talking to her son!)is perhaps the young adult who begins sadistically attacking the characters of the reunion, one by one, surprising them when they are preoccupied, finishing them off in the basement where the deformed kid was kept away from the outside world. The film shows the deteriorating mindset of those who have gathered with their teacher, their emotional outbursts, confronting her on how she has misshapen their lives for the worse. Shortly afterward, however, most of them meet a grisly fate. I will say that BLOODY REUNION isn't your typical slasher..this is a film with something to say. It is chock full with anger, pint-up animosity, buried hostility that is surfacing(..and had built over the years), and the reunion provides an opportunity to aggressively seek answers for the torment that has lingered due to the improper upbringing by a teacher who was supposed to nurture her students, not belittle and criticize them. The film has a whopper of a twist which many might compare loosely to HIGH TENSION, but BLOODY REUNION does it in a very effective way that works rather well and isn't riddled with plot holes. Almost completely told from the point of view of Jung-won(Seong-won Jang), sadly slumped over the bedside of her mentor, to a detective attempting to piece together the sequence of events that led to the slaughter, the school teacher's indictment is brought to light over the course of the film. It is far from a pretty picture. The teacher is made to look as if she held a disregard for the poor, often ridiculed those with weaknesses(..one's nonathletic ability, another's weight issues), and even possibly molested her attractive male student(..which has turned him into a pill-popping wreck). At a very sickly state where she's confined to a wheel chair and can not control her bowels, the teacher is at her most vulnerable and weakest. Her punishment, the bad karma which is returning the favor, should be enough, but these former students, fueled by years of self-loathing, social rejects with buried contempt for the very one they sought approval(..always wanting to please her), have a chance to unleash the vitriolic rage held inside for far too long. The violence can get pretty unsettling as one is a victim of a vicious razor blade attack(..after bound to a chair, he's fed broken razors and water to wash them down!), one's eyelids are stapled, another is pummeled with a bat(..before the final crushing blows, we watch as ants enter his orifices and bleeding wounds..yuck!), with eyes gouged, and a neck stabbed, blood squirting from the hole. The teacher's life is threatened multiple times when students approach her with violent intent, but each time she is spared in the nick of time. The very fact that they have such hate for her and are dying so horribly is enough punishment..because she realizes that she's the real mastermind behind everything. Now, I will not reveal the twist, but before the bellyachers lay claim that it makes the film a waste of time..I beg to differ. The teacher is still responsible for those under her care, and their obligations to those under her is of great importance. The mentor and role model, the teacher can shape minds, and motivate her students to be the best they can be. It can work both ways, and even if what we witness may not totally be accurate, the same negative feelings still exist and the behavior of an adult towards a student she has distaste for can ultimately bring about such dire consequences. This is a slasher with a potent punch. Care given to the characters and the twist isn't something merely thrown in there to foil the viewer, but comes from a dark place. Slasher fans definitely should give this one a shot..it's a winner.

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• Death Reunion

  Chrysanthepop2011-07-17

  Dae-wung Lim's 'Seuseung-ui Eunhye' is pretty much another East Asian slasher flick made in the traditional fashion. It starts off slow and drags on. For a slasher flick, there isn't that much slashing which isn't necessarily a bad thing provided that the story's good enough. But, once the slashing starts, it goes on until almost the end. The torture scenes are quite creative and well executed. Unlike the Hollywood slasher flicks, the story here has layers and at least some of the twists make sense. Yet, it's not without its share of flaws. Plot holes are abundant and the pacing is poor. The dialogues do ramble on at some point. The performances, especially those of Seong-won Jang and Mi-hee Oh are better than what one usually expects from such movies. This certainly isn't the best of East Asian horror and slasher but it's not a bad suggestion for those who enjoy this kind of stuff.

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• Decent horror flick with some genuine creepiness, but not as good as I had hoped

  massaster7602007-03-30

  Tartan's new release, Bloody Reunion (a.k.a. To Sir, With Love) is not a remake of the 1964 classic starring Sidney Poitier. It is a grimy, sadistic, South Korean foray into the slasher flick genre. In ways it is very reminiscent of early 80's Horror flicks like Jason or Sleepaway Camp. And just as those films are considered cinematic trash, Blood Reunion might also fit the same description. Fortunately for my viewing pleasure, I love Asian Trash Cinema! Bloody Reunion tells the story of a group of elementary students who return years later to visit their former teacher-who has recently took ill-in the countryside. Once the group arrives, the film briefly jumps back and forth between the past and present, showing us that this sweet teacher (Mrs. Park) had a cruel side to her. In fact as the film progresses we find out that most of her former students have murderous intentions towards the teacher. And their not the only ones with murderous intentions, as we soon find out. Someone in the group is systematically bumping off the students one by one in the most gruesome fashion possible. That's pretty much the story, as the film's narrative kinda sputters out after the first 30 minutes and then degenerates into a slasher flick (literally). The film than takes you through a series of murders each more horrid than the next. This goes on for awhile, and if the film was just this,I would have probably liked it less. But just when you thought you've figured it out, the film twists into a way that you don't expect. And is pleasantly surprising. The film has a lot of faults and loose ends. For one, the sub plot about Mrs. Park's deformed child never really pays off. The acting is substandard (but does anyone really expect good acting in a slasher flick?). And as I mentioned before the story kinda just stops and the viewer is left with a lot of unanswered questions. I guess it all depends on what your frame of mind when you watch it. Don't go into this with high expectations and you just might come out liking it. Also, if gore and violence aren't your thing, STAY AWAY from this film. All in All, a decent horror flick with some genuine creepiness. Not as good as I had hoped, but it's nice to see a director depart from the long-haired ghost girl movies that Asian Cinema seems to puts out over and over

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• I bought this movie expecting something else...

  Oil_Painter2007-07-15

  Bloody Reunion is described as a horror/slasher movie, but because of all the hype and good reviews of this movie, I was expecting a better storyline than what is usually found in this genre. I am a huge fan of Asian horror in general because of the greater depth of their story lines, yet this movie remains confusing throughout. Also, even though I'm not a big gore-hound, this movie really doesn't provide the gruesome killings expected by most American slasher fans, although those scenes were quite unique. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Confused storyline: The most significant problem I had with this film is that what did and didn't really happen is not fully explained. We find out that the story told to the police by the one surviving student,who is also Mrs. Parks caretaker, is a lie. We are then told that these students meet every year with their teacher, that they are all in fact successful, that the student known as "Shy-Guy" never really existed, that the young woman caring for the inexplicably wheelchair bound Mrs. Park is in reality the student known as "Shy Guy", and that all of the nasty things the young woman described as being done to the other students, were in reality all done to her by Mrs. Park. Confused? It gets even better. Also, we find out that all of those former-students were killed with poison, and then mutilated by the young woman. Why would she kill her former classmates? Well, we are shown a flashback of this young woman as a student, and in this scene she is humiliated by her classmates and her teacher, Mrs. Park, when she has her first menstruation in class: They all insist that she has defecated in her pants. (Wait, there's more) She goes home to her poor mother, who loves her more than anything, and after telling her mother what happened, the mother is so angry that she goes marching off to the school(clutching her daughter's bloody underwear as proof) and is killed when she is hit by a car. The girl left school, and hasn't been seen until she shows up to care for Mrs. Park about a year before the reunion. Oh, and this young woman also keeps her dead mother in her old apartment, and Mrs. Park may or may not have had a hideously deformed son that she kept in her basement who liked to wear the same bunny mask the killer is described as wearing when the young woman tells her fabricated story to the police. At the end of this movie I was left wondering: What really happened? Who really existed? Why did I pay $29.00 at Borders for this movie?

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