Ghastly Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A young boy is taken in by his relatives after the apparent murder/suicide of his family while cliched antics ensue.

Review: This film really baffled me for a number of reasons: it made no sense, was too short, and loaded with cliches. There were two good things and one of them only lasted until the end of the film unfortunately. First, the atmosphere at the beginning is nice. It's not incredible, but what with the duel plot points of the police investigating the mystery and the main relatives trying to get used to the boy, Bin, it kept you wondering what was going on. Sadly, there was a certain point, I guess when they find some missing grandma/mom/aunt (I seriously could not understand her actual relationship to the main cast!) this coincides with Bin transforming into a wannabe Chucky or some other "little" killer-type. The other good thing about this film is the sexy sister, Yoo-rin, who is played by a K-pop singer, stage named Hyomin; if you recall back to my review of "White: The Melody of the Curse" I mention another super hot girl, Eun-Jeong Ham, from this same group called T-ara. To my great dismay we only have one real scene where they play up her "sexyness" and they idiotically kill her off screen in one of the weirdest and unexplained death scenes I've ever watched. The majority of the film she is acting like a brat and constantly being eyed up by the main girl's, Seo-Ni, husband who is also a total asshole. In fact, the husband has two stupid plot points that led nowhere: he seems to be attracted to Yoo-rin but they never act on this, and he had some weird debt collector issue that just disappears half way through (seriously, what the hell?). It's funny because they build up the husband being such a douche that you can't wait for him to die only for him to be killed off screen too! As for the mindless main plot, let me clarify what you are about to read is my understanding of what I watched which may not be accurate for shit. Bin's "parents" took him in because he was homeless or something only to use him in some spell I'm assuming to give birth to their own child? This "grandma" (or whatever) is some shaman that is able to do this. Some aspect of the spell involved cutting the kid's feet off and throwing him in some jar. Eventually the vengeful spirit of the boy possesses current version of Bin and exacts revenge on the "parents." When he is taken in by the relatives, he simply repossesses Bin to continue his rampage because he's an evil spirit now. Thus, zany antics will ensue. That's the gist of it...if I'm wrong, someone please explain this nonsense to me! Also, in typical K-horror fashion, the ending made no fucking sense whatsoever! Seo-Ni is supposed to be six months pregnant the whole film but you would NEVER guess that because she's so skinny. They imply the ghost somehow possessed her baby, but uh, okay...always end on a zinger I suppose. The film isn't terrible, and might have actually been good if it had made more sense.  Overall, this is just a mediocre film that never really got off the ground and lacks any scares or tension; most of the so-called scary moments are just more damn dream sequences! Ugh, I will break down and say it's just barely worth a view especially if you like T-ara and/or Hyomin since this was her film debut.

Notable Moment: When one of the detectives notices something in one of the crime photos, and they enlarge said picture to see the reflection of the ghost/killer in the victim's eye.

Final Rating: 5/10