Epitaph Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: At the end of a man's life, he reminisces about the strange occurrences he experienced at a hospital as a young medical student.

Review: Okay, this is the final Netflix deletion movie unless they suddenly get rid of more in the future, and I tried to save the best for last. Although this isn't an outright anthology film, it pretty much follows that formula with mild overlap between the stories; I guess they figured the stories would intertwine in a more meaningful way, but that is not openly apparent. Some of the ideas are really creative, and there is at least one big scare during each segment, but there is this sensation they are borrowing heavily from other Korean films with serious emphasis on "A Tale of Two Sisters." And to confound things more you have that annoying K-horror cliche of nothing making any sense.

Since I do view this as an unofficial anthology, I will tackle the film by its three acts. Keep in mind the stories are meant to all be taking place at the same hospital, during the same couple days, and involve the same characters for the most part. There is a makeshift wraparound built into the first act as we begin with some old doctor finding his journal or something from his youth as a med student. We see the man interacting with his daughter, but there is a mysterious Japanese schoolgirl always at his side that is never acknowledged. Through narration, we learn he dies that night as we cut back to 1942 and see the strange incidents that occurred at this hospital he trained under. Although this is probably the weakest story between the three acts, it still offers a somewhat offbeat story (though, still not entirely unheard of in the realm of horror). The man is close with the director of the hospital which we can assume is why he can be such a slacker and have no repercussions. Unfortunately, there is no attempt to include this favoritism and slacker behavior into the story; I guess this is supposed to be character development? The man is betrothed to some Japanese girl he's never met, or only met once, at the behest of the director. The girl appears to have committed suicide, but I could never understand if it was because she didn't want to get married or loved someone else. They keep mentioning another guy, but then where was his body? Anyway, the man does not realize she is his fiancee when he deals with her body in the morgue and finds himself strangely drawn to her beauty. But before anything of significance can arise, we learn the director performed some kind of ritual to marry the ghost of the girl to the man. Either way, there is a cool scare when the girl first makes her presence known, but the plot goes nowhere and basically just ends with, "Well, he has a ghost attached to him. Good luck with that." At the end of the movie, we cut back to the beginning scenes where the man tries to talk to the ghost. He implies the ghost had killed his other wives and wanted to know why, but it just ends with her staring at him and then the man drops dead. Eh. Everything looks good in the film as a whole, the music is good, that old, WWII era feel is done surprisingly well, and these stories always have you guessing.

The second act was scarier and tried to tackle less explored concepts like survivor's guilt and the Electra complex. The most respected doctor at the hospital is given a young girl for a patient that is plagued by nightmares after her family was killed in a car accident. The girl, who does a fantastic job by the way, sees visions of her mother looking sadistic and soaked in blood while other strange images haunt her. But the dreams go beyond simply keeping the girl from sleeping as they also have a physical affect on her body bringing her closer to death. Through prodding of the girl and the crash we learn that her mother was remarrying some guy. The girl saw the couple having sex and appeared to develop her own attachment to the stepfather. On the day of the accident, the girl was being bratty and tried to grab onto the stepfather while he was driving at the moment an old woman was crossing the road. After immediately killing the stepfather and old woman, the girl's mother carried her to safety until she died leaving the girl obviously traumatized by the guilt she felt for setting the events into motion; this is on top of whatever emotions she feels for being attracted to the stepfather and rivaling her mother. Then the girl is haunted by one more nightmare until she dies from shock or something as a result of her inability to cope with the guilt or the ghosts got to her. Instead of leaving things well enough alone, the doctor is then shown walking home one night, is hit by a car, and sees the dead girl standing where she had been in a photo he had of her. Uh okay. What is that supposed to mean? Couldn't this have simply been the tragic tale of a misguided girl, and it is left up the imagination of the audience of whether it was ghosts or guilt that killed her? You just had to throw in that shot. The cinematography and special effects are awesome during this act as we see beautiful scenery and interesting ideas successfully realized.

The last act is the one that mirrors "A Tale of Two Sisters" a little too closely. Two married doctors appear to have an idyllic life full of romance until the husband notices the wife has no shadow. I don't know what he thinks of her, because he seems scared but does nothing. Throughout the film we heard rumors of a serial killer targeting Japanese soldiers which, to no shock, we discover is the wife. The husband tries to stop the wife, but has visions of himself committing the murders; he also finds wounds on himself inflicted by one of the victims and becomes confused. The husband then comes to the conclusion his wife was killed during surgery on some Japanese officer and he believes her spirit is trapped inside of him--controlling him to commit the murders as revenge of some sort. The husband then confesses to a Japanese officer overseeing the hospital, but the husband attacks the officer when he comes to arrest him. When the husband becomes cornered, he is trying to kill some med student as he claims he can't control the spirit of his wife. Then in yet another little twisteroo, it is revealed that the husband was the one who really died during that surgery, and the wife has become confused as to who she really is. Oh no, crazy dissociative identity disorder with a double twisteroony! Seriously, this plays off embarrassingly like "A Tale of Two Sisters" which had only come out a few years prior and was/is like the biggest Korean movie there is! They knew what they were doing. Regardless, the story plays out kind of cool with the same style and look this film pulls off well enough.

A couple final words I wanted to mention was that I did skip over a few overlap moments like how the main Japanese officer was the one that hit the doctor that was taking care of the little girl, the director ends up committing suicide, etc. But the attempts to tie the stories together were too weak; these scenes feel like the characters are forcibly crossing paths rather than all the stories coming together. You'd think, considering they're all at the same hospital, this wouldn't have been too hard. Anyway, the stories aren't the best, don't bring much new to the table, and have K-horror cliched endings, but they are presented beautifully. The acting, set designs, tone, atmosphere, music, and cinematography are top-notched. Although I enjoyed the film, there was definitely a higher quality in the technical aspects of the film when compared to the storytelling. Nonetheless, I would recommend this for the sheer elegance of the look while being a hidden anthology with slightly above average tales.

Notable Moment: During the second act when Asako has visions of her dead mother. The mother is pretty creepy and the imagery is awesome.

Final Rating: 6/10

Bonus: What I would have done, and what this film inspires me to write: I felt like the setup was really good but wasted. I propose making some kind of anthology tale whereby you have a morgue attendant receive multiple bodies all at once. I figure make the victims all female and maybe go with a working title of something like "The Midnight Girls." The morgue attendant looks over the bodies one at a time as we go over the events that led to each victim's death. Definitely have crossover, and I already have ideas of how the actions of each character would lead to the others' demise indirectly. I'm thinking 3 tales would be good with the extra wraparound involving the morgue attendant. It could end with the morgue attendant noticing one more body that was unaccounted for. I could go the corny cliche route of it being his own body and then tell his tale, but I feel like it would be better to have someone he recognizes and have it reflect and connect to subtle dialogue that this morgue attendant would be saying during the wraparound and in between segments. Sound cool enough? Maybe if I write it up I could post on here.