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Saturday, September 1, 2012

Be With Me (aka Ghost) Review



Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A Korean horror anthology tale based around ghosts that wish to make a connection.

Review: I love horror anthologies, but this one felt incredibly weak. My main fault with this film was they could have shortened all the tales by 5-10 minutes and added a fourth story to the mix. Furthermore, only one story is actually intended to be scary or at least how I see it; the first one is the horror, the second is a drama, and the third is more comedy/action. The wraparound really is a waste because it's so short and does very little except to have a point of origin for the three stories. Essentially, the characters of each story visit a tarot card reader, and he says some lame dialogue about them each having a "once in a lifetime encounter." Uh, how vague and could be applied to virtually any situation; the end of this wraparound falls flat by just showing that more people come to him (I think we could have assumed that!). The first story shows us some girl dying and eventually haunting the broken down part of the school she died in. This story is a mess, and it didn't know which way it wanted to go. We get some bullied kids, ambiguity around whether the ghost is killing people because apparently it just doesn't want to be alone, and lots of contrivances and useless plot points. It also annoyed me how the ghost died (it would seem Korean girls are made of glass), her motivation for tormenting people, and why exactly she is haunting the school to begin with. The second story is just as confusing and also a complete mess. I often see these lesbian-like (not there's anything wrong with it) relationships in Korean movies which I've read Korean girls have these close bonds that can confuse unaware people. But even in this film we have people askng "are they?" On top of this we have ambiguity regarding a pregnancy and a pointless ghost that went nowhere. The ending line "I love you" left me still wondering whether that is to imply they really were lovers. Finally, the last story was fun which is the only reason I rated this as high as I did. It feels much like a nod to "The Sixth Sense" but the boy is little older and if the ghosts were more amusing. A guy sees ghosts and one ghost girl notices him staring, but she is apparently friendly. They strike up a friendship in which he finds out she wants to confess her love to the guy she liked before she died. Along the way they must deal with a douchebag teacher and the evil spirit of the man who killed the girl in life. It is an intesting and unique approach to the story which I did enjoy. For the most part, the movie as a whole is boring with only standard Asian horror fare, but I'd highly recommend the third part as reason enough to give it a chance.

Notable Moment: In the third story, when we see the "ghost boy" trying not to let the main ghost know he can see her.

Final Rating: 6/10

7 comments:

  1. I like your review but there is something we call paragraph.

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  2. My reviews from the first year are rushed, to say the least, which is why I began a series of updated reviews to those. The first couple reviews started off with only a few sentences, but I began to expand with each following review--turning it into walls of texts. I stopped doing that a couple years ago though after I realized how hard they were to read.

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  3. I think just like you think at the second.....wonder why they have to put that such element .....

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  4. I would have died 1000 times and more if falling from the height of a school ruler could kill you. Love your reviews by the way. I have bad memory and I sometimes read your reviews to recall if I have seen certain movies.

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  5. She was made of glass I suppose. I should probably finally do an update review for this movie and give it a second chance.

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  6. Awesome idea. Maybe you'll like it more or hate it.

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  7. I was a bit frustrated with the 1st one as - My opinon-didn't think a short fall would kill the girl.Cat a ghost,too?
    I enjoyed the Anthology-especially the third one"Haunted Boy".

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