Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!
Plot Summary: An anthology of weird horror shorts, allegedly, based off some webtoon series.
Review: The first thing I want to acknowledge is this whole idea of a webtoon series that inspired this movie. Yeaaah, I can't find that. If anyone knows where I can view these let me know! Well, supposedly, the best segments from that series were selected for feature-length. Let's just say if these were the best I'd hate to see the worst. More precisely, these tales are on the bland and aimless side of things. In fairness, the stories are shot well and competently put together...they're just weak and have little to no payoff. Allow me to demonstrate.
Ding-Dong Challenge: Starting things off is probably the most straight to the point entry. Three girls, that are aspiring dancers, notice an up and coming pop star appears to have copied her moves from a mysterious video online. It's not completely clear, or something was lost in translation, but if you do the dance in the haunted video accurately you're wish is granted, however, if you screw up, the ghost comes out of the video and kills you. I think that's the right interpretation of what we see. So it's hinted that the pop star getting famous had her wish granted, and the other girls attempt, and fail, to replicate the dance except one. When this girl is the last alive, seemingly having her wish granted, you think we are about to get the epic finale, but then it just ends. Okaaaay. I mean, the girls are cute and the ghost was pretty cool, but, ultimately, it's missing a final act and conclusion. Nevertheless, it's not a bad way to start the film.
The Prey: As with the first story, this second tale has an intriguing setup that goes nowhere and ends abruptly too. A girl trying to get grades good enough for medical school is beat by her mom and taunted by her sister for continued failures. One day, a ghost or demon of some sort appears to the girl promising good grades if she offers up animal sacrifices. Sure enough, the girl makes these sacrifices and begins to ace all of her exams. Later on, after having a Walking on Sunshine-esque montage, the girl realizes she needs a sacrifice asap, but the rabbit she planned to kill was returned. Uh oh. So she decides to, as one would naturally do, immediately spiral into a crazed, homicidal madness. She kills her sister, followed by her mom, and then--big shock--the segment ends out of nowhere. Did she even pass the last test?! Don't leave me hanging! Once again, what was the point? Who or what was this ghost-thing? It honestly would have made more sense to just say she snapped one day rather than this nonsense with supernatural elements. The main girl was really cute at least.
Jackpot: For our next tale, a guy that has won a ton of money gambling is hiding out at a seedy hotel while thieves are hoping to get their hands on those winnings. Contributing jackshit to the plot, the hotel is haunted, and the main guy sees ghost periodically. If these spirits connected in any way to the story I'd be okay, but, they don't, so what was the point? Through a series of zany antics, the hotel burns down, the main guy stays to burn too, and no one gets the money. Yes, you could argue the ghosts, who were suicides, wanted him to join them but that's a bit of a reach; maybe I missed something. Regardless, I wanted to like this entry for the goofiness and originality, but it's so hard to overlook the lack of a payoff in most of these stories.
The Residents-Only Gym: When this story starts, you might be like me and see a toned-up chick running on a treadmill and smile. Yes, here we go, boys! Unfortunately, this is probably the worst segment of the bunch. Long story short, the gym at some apartment building is haunted by a chick who died there due to the landlord's bitchiness. One dumbass tenant decides to ignore warnings not go in after a certain time, runs into the ghost, barely survives, and still goes back later to get killed. Good job. At the end, the son of the landlord just has to use this gym too and dies. I guess that's a payoff to a degree, right? It just felt like they wasted the setting, and why would this ghost want to kill any random sucker simply trying to stay in shape, huh?!
Rehab: Moving along, we have a woman who was in some kind of accident that then wakes up in a weird room. The woman's memories are hazy as she's greeted by the one crazy bitch from "Squid Game." We learn the woman is in some kind of bizarre rehabilitation experiment whereby she needs to complete tasks in order to live. There is a level of pretentiousness here that is annoying as we learn the main chick has, seemingly, had her body donated to science after that accident at the beginning. Her brain is hooked up to machines and her consciousness is accidentally put into mice or something to that nature. Up to this point every tale had ghosts so for things to suddenly go sci-fi felt off. Maybe this should have been segment 2 or 3 to fix the flow; this is especially true given that the final story is grounded in reality.
Gluttony: Wrapping things up is probably the only, legitimately, entertaining story of the bunch. Two competing streamers in the mukbang scene have a beef after one was called out for being a fake. For those that don't waste their lives online, mukbang videos are just people eating ridiculous quantities of food, but they aren't necessarily competitive eaters. As an aside, the main chick is way too good looking to be eating that much food, however, I do approve. Anyway, these two once had an eating contest to prove they're for real resulting in the smaller girl being exposed, humiliated, and, as we come to learn, beat up by the main chick. The two decide to have a live-streamed rematch eating 5 large meals. Of course, this is a plot of revenge by the humiliated girl who, not only out-eats the main chick, but poisoned her as well. We then discover she had surgery done to make her stomach enormous. While there were no scares here, the weird-factor was interesting and original. Also, the main chick looked sexier the more unhinged she became!
So what are you really getting here? Well, there's no wraparound to tie things together, the themes are all over the place, and there's no consistency in tone or structure. Other than a guy watching the mukbang stream in the "Jackpot" segment, nothing links these stories together so that you'd know they came from this anthology; I've discussed this problem with numerous anthologies I've reviewed over the years. Other than that complaint, there simply isn't much going on here in general. The stories aren't bad, but they aren't good either--just okay. If any segment attracts you then, by all means, check this out, but I believe there are better alternatives out there, many of which I've covered previously.
Notable Moment: In the first story when the one girl has her eye ripped out. This was effectively executed and looked quite painful and grotesque.
Final Rating: 5.5/10
