Wish Upon (2017)

Horror rule #192: If you find a mysterious box with ancient writing on it, put it back

By: JWBM

Everyone is standing around with quiet anticipation. A decorative cake and just the right amount of candles are set up for this one moment. The flames go out and boom: a wish is made. We all wonder what that wish could have been. I mean, it's bad luck to tell. But I am going to take a wild guess and say few out there are using their moment to silently end all violence, to cure all deadly diseases, or to simply end all pain. Heck, even an instant universal translator, or a small starter colony on an earth-like planet would be nice. Because those might be a tad convenient and useful for more than one person.

Take your average teenage girl and give her an old box with ancient Chinese characters on it. Sounds safe enough. Though this box turns out to be capable of making seven wishes come true. Sounds like a good deal. Though with everything, there's a catch. Each time a wish is fulfilled, someone surrounding her must die. Sounds like it's going to be terrible for everyone involved. Needless to say, "Wish Upon" isn't going to be a humanitarian effort to display a humble, selfless person that has everyone's aims and goals in mind. Then again, where's the entertainment in that?

The tone of this film is more drama than it is horror. It tends to play out more upbeat and trendy than it does consistently frightful. The story feels like it made a life's-little-problems teen drama out of something along the lines of "Final Destination" meets superstitious Asian horror. At least those had an earnest build up right up till the point someone got it. Or at least an unsettling and demanding message to it all compared to, here, worrying about minuscule squabbles and social media bickering.

"Wish Upon" is kind of restrained at points, making the temperature of the whole experience feel lukewarm than being capable of stepping up the heat to make you sweat around the collar. It's not a bad or offensive film. Just not an adventurous or memorable one either. It fills the spaces and engages your brain smoothly from point A to point B. Just nothing more or less. The formula is strong with this one, not to mention the themes to fall back on are presented predictably generic: be careful what you wish for; be true to yourself and those around you; don't be superficial by concentrating on material things or flirtatious love; and, most importantly, don't inadvertently kill those around you. Kind of important that last one.

Rating: 5.5/10

Director: John R. Leonetti (Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Annabelle)
Actors: Joey King, Ryan Phillippe, Ki Hong Lee
Info: IMDB link
Trailer: Youtube link

Truth or Dare (2018)

Choices: there's only two that matter these days

By: JWBM

Spring break, Mexico: friends, beaches, drinking, sex, and a game of truth or dare at a local abandoned church. How could that go wrong? Soon enough, this group of pals and lovers with a penchant for booze and free time find out how serious this little game will be.

One of the most important aspects of any horror movie is its setup. It's like a comedian that doesn't get you to laugh in the first few minutes, how well do you think the rest of the experience is going to end up? "Truth or Dare" is a perfect example of a film that grazes over this key element in order to try and pick up the pieces later. This not only throws off the pacing, but it never fully recovers. It's like expecting to have the audience cheer for you at the end of the race, but starting out with your shoes untied. The story is far-fetched enough to begin with, though give this better direction and the audience might be right there with you to believe this supernatural force is attempting to make this group of adult-age friends play a deadly game of truth or dare. Instead it feels borderline silly, with odd CGI grins from the villains to put the final nail in the coffin.

The tone of the film is all over the place. It feels pieced together at times and somewhat erratic for where you're going to be taken. One moment they're attempting drama, to a forced scare, to some drum-roll worthy joke all in one scene. It makes all of this bickering between the two best friends over a guy not only abrupt, but nauseating to listen to. The plot at some point explains itself and then re-explains itself in simpler terms at a later point. Didn't we already have that conversation? As if they wanted to make sure your wavering attention span is still with them. Then this turns amateur, 21st century Scooby-Doo, where they must search out clues on Google and Facebook after their friends start dying left and right. Makes this feel like a simple TV movie, and not something you'd see on the big screen. It's like the writers weren't quite sure how to piece it all together. That or went back and attempted to edit the story by trying to appease everyone at the same time, while not actually appeasing anyone that well.

There are worse horror movies out there. This isn't the bottom of the barrel. But "Truth or Dare" is still mostly a waste of time. There are moments where the filmmakers catch your interest with a certain set up, plot point, or at another moment where one of the actors is giving this their best. But they are few and far between.

Rating: 4/10

Recommended instead: "Get Out," and "It Follows"

Director: Jeff Wadlow ("Never Back Down," "Kick-ass 2")
Actors: Lucy Hale, Violett Beane, Tyler Posey
Info: IMDB
Trailer: Youtube


And a bonus, things I learned from "Truth or Dare": 

7. You can easily just drove over to Mexico and back again.
6. Pretty young 20-somethings have ample time to do ample sleuthing.
5. It's never a bad time to say a joke or two.
4. Always pick truth.
3. Whenever a plot is re-explained, it's the editor's way of knowing their pacing is messed up.
2. Never go from drinking at a safe public place to a non-safe abandoned church, unless you're a licensed exorcist.
1. Alcohol is a catalyst for bad choices.

It Follows (2014)

A persistent, unshakable strangeness afoot

By: JWBM

Dreams have been written about since man first learned to jot down his first words. We try to interpret them, and even attempt to use them as motivation or inspiration. Some bring about good feelings, while others bring about bad when they warp our day-to-day reality. We always have that option to reset and wake up. What happens, though, when something in your life feels so strange it resembles a dream even when you open your eyes? You lay your head down, you wake up, and that odd sensation persists to the point of actually losing sleep. Or is it never actually waking up?

This film is incredibly ambiguous and also incredibly simple by design. It's not outright said, but it essentially feels like a rough outline of a nightmare of sorts. Though not as vague in premise as "Eraserhead," but also not as complex as "Nightmare Detective" concerning dreams. It shares characteristics of "The Broken" with its sense of paranoia and uncanniness. In a nutshell, a pretty, young woman is lured into having a curse overshadow her like a dark rain cloud that never goes away. It only drifts closer and closer—like a slow, inevitable shuffle—and eventually unleashes its fury with little to no warning or coverage in sight.

"It Follows" is chock full of atmosphere—and then some. Where it lacks the kind of enriching
dialogue and layer upon layer of story of other films, it makes up for in ambiance of the actual cool but creepy kind. You'll get treated with an abundance of these gorgeous wide-angle shots, to this feeling-the-moment style of soundtrack that uses anything from jarring sounds, to soothing electronic rhythms. The sets have a share of things purposely laid about from bygone years over anything outright from 2014. The way the villains are introduced—with some can't-shake-that-horrific-image-from-memory visuals—not only evokes terror for the character, but it seems to resonate to the viewer, too. With everything combined, the tone is effective enough to get under your skin and possibly end up in a dream or three of your own.

This isn't a thinking man's movie, but rather a tale that breathes more icy breath than it does enlightening words. It's subtle in how it plays on your senses in the moment-to-moment. It has a narrow vision, but a steadfast purpose; it slowly hooks you in to the point of everything else beginning to seem too far away to see or grasp onto. The tick-tock of the wall clock goes away, outside traffic ceases, and you're left with this growing, unexplainable presence all around you that keeps sucking you in to its strangeness. The experience is like having your senses kidnapped, then returned in a more horrible state than they were left in.

'I knew I had a few screws loose before, but my brain was a little less warped than that.'

There's violence at times, but "It Follows" isn't a blood filled movie. It's horror that plays on your nerves with a dash of paranoia thrown in for good measure. What's great about this setup, is normal, everyday things can't always protect you or make you feel safe. Such as sex, daylight, the police, being surrounded by friends, or even in the comfort of your own living room watching the tube on the ol' couch. The film takes relatable features, then inverts them into a weird, out-of-body experience. I've got to tip my hat to the filmmakers for their patience at setting their pacing up just right--or, oh so wrong, oh so wrong.

This didn't exactly re-invent the wheel. There's bits and pieces of past horror influences all over the place here. Though the mechanics of it are pieced together so well that it deserves a watch or two over some original pieces that tried and didn't live up to their own formula. It's tried and true and delivers the goods that the horror genre demands. Actually, some of the details are kept to a more hazy and round-about way, which I think works best here. It keeps the surface at a consistent atmospheric level, than having to hold the audience's hand for every minute detail, or even jeopardizing the flow with too many twists and turns. Next time you hear the scrape of feet too close, or see someone familiar that doesn't look all together there, you can thank "It Follows." That's their plainly wrapped, inconspicuous gift to you that may have a surprise waiting...

Rating: 8/10

Director: David Robert Mitchell
Actors: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Lili Sepe
Info: IMDB
Trailer: Youtube

The Burnt House (2009)

This relationship is destined to burn

Megan and Joe are going through a rough patch in their marriage after their baby accidentally died. Joe carries blame and Megan seeks comfort with another guy named James. Suddenly Joe's mother dies and he suggests they both go out to the house he grew up with in rural Pennsylvania to get away from distractions and start anew their relationship from life in New York City. From then on out the story comes to a slow, dragging, give-me-something-more-for-my-time halt as they figure out what they're doing there except without actually doing much of anything substantial apart from everyday ordeals.

The atmosphere is drab and the storytelling is dismal as you watch the characters loosely go about their tedious habits and then fight and make up over and over again for the course of four long and enduring days that make it feel like months on end or as if time itself is going backwards. Don't we have our own issues to worry about in real life already instead of watching something else unexceptional? There's apparently a curse in the area that makes the husbands homicidal maniacs that go after their family like something out of "The Amityville Horror." Except, the picture hints it's been following around Joe's lineage since his great grandfather but not actually what caused it or what it is exactly that leads them to violence. In between their squabbles, the characters hear some random noises and get nightmares. There are also abrupt cuts to horrific visuals with a burnt face that are strategically placed enough times to feel like signature commercial break montages that you can count on instead of being more frightening. At times they're revealed for the audience's eyes only instead of establishing more foreshadowing with the characters that would grow and be a challenging puzzle to unlock.

"The Burnt House" is a lonely and depressing experience, they got that part down, but it still doesn't turn that around to feel like an engaging diversion since it retreads and goes in mundane circles. Nor does it give something to take away from the experience such as "Downloading Nancy" did for the complex and deep rooted ruination of a relationship that gave progressive stages albeit about a degradative subject. This also isn't "Antichrist" with a couple in the woods trying to figure out their problems from a child dying with enough enigmas to keep the audience intrigued and engaged for unsaid answers that can bring one back again. Not to mention there are periodic narration pieces by Joe placed in to concisely explain the past and present but it seems strange that whenever he speaks to his wife out loud he can't solve the problems at hand. It makes you think it was more a filmmaking shortcut than actually matching the personality of the character. Eventually Megan gets bored and searches the attic for the house's shadowy history, while Joe goes off to who knows where and is getting suspicious of James who is leaving messages on Megan's phone. Instead of getting better, everything is boiling over as Joe is starting to act stranger and stranger and more and more distant from the problems at hand or something else.

If there's any chemistry between the two, it feels more like brother and sister than a former romantic couple. It's as if they ran out of things to say or do together to the point of running the well dry. Why they're together or what they saw in each other to hold on like this, who knows? Not to mention they're literally two of the most average and uneventful people you'd meet since they have no ambitions or other angles to themselves besides the 3 Cs: complaining, cigarettes and a cell phone. The kind that you've met countless times at barbecues and parties and forgot them as soon as you walked away. The main actress Monica Knight does a decent job for what little she's given by acting natural and not as if she's taking someone else's direction or reading someone else's lines like so many do on these little stepping stone projects. J.D. Brown, playing Joe, feels boring and miserable. He delivers his dialogue in such a stale, passionless way as to lose the command of the audience. Maybe that was the point, but then I'd have to ask to what point? He's like an unlikable Silent Bob in the way he slouches around and constantly smokes like a chimney, except when he speaks doesn't carry the charisma to be mysterious, cool or important between the wait from puffs.

Apart from being a drama about a couple on thin ice, this is essentially a haunted area/house film that carries a curse, but the latter is so elusive and buried by other aspects as to lose focus and become confusing for something so simplistic at heart. "The Burnt House," for lack of a large budget, tries to be abstract and stylish. Though with all of the excessive areas of attempted innovation, the film loses a driving point and it ends up bogging down the pacing to the point of feeling excessively tiresome. Even with the melodrama and supernatural events in the midst it fails to keep the audience concerned. The beginning, with its slow and sad montages mixed with kill-yourself-now piano pieces, can't stand still long enough to feel like a film but instead a sampled preview. It's almost like a cologne commercial for the manic depressive consumer. There was also an over-the-top gore scene that was shocking for the first couple of seconds but then went on to make itself desensitizing. There was potential here at its inception and I can see where it was going by doing something heavily moody and different from the same ol', but very little worked towards the filmmaker's benefit and this ambitious project ended up being far worse than a formulaic, run-of-the-mill horror movie that it was distancing itself from. It was a risk because you couldn't have done this halfway, with the final result either being brilliant or falling flat and looking a fluke. This just happened to be the latter.

Rating: 1.5/10

Director: Adam Ahlbrandt (Sight)
Stars: J.D. Brown, Monica Knight
Link: IMDB

Yoga Hakwon (2009)

Beauty at a cost

This takes over the spot for the strangest movie I've seen involving yoga. The last contender of "Kung Fu vs Yoga" included dislocating limbs and thought-to-be-impossible moves against traditional martial arts. "Yoga Hakwon," on the other hand, is a supernatural horror-mystery from South Korea that involves a group of women who want to achieve even more beauty than they already have. They're so blinded by vanity that the light at the end of the tunnel they perceive is really as dark as they come.

A woman named Kim Hyo-jung is caught up in the superficial world around her, whether it be selling lingerie on the home shopping network in Korea or dining out with acquaintances who are moving up in the world whichever way they can. There's a side of her that wants to be genuine, though currently the pressure of her friends' influences causes her to reevaluate her life. She throws a tantrum at her nice and laid back boyfriend and then gets fired from her job due to the other female co-host being more attractive than anything else. She confronts a woman named Sun-hwa who said it was out of her hands but then recommends a yoga studio owned by a secretive woman named Kahn Mi-hi--who was a former actress known for her beauty but carried a terrible voice--that might be able to help Hyo-jung with an intensive training class. So far so good...

Their instructor Na-ni tells them about a strict set of rules involving outside contact, mirrors, unauthorized food, showers and the usual confidentiality agreement. They put full trust into this unheard of studio without even a sign out front, only to act selfish towards one another to win a process involving seven chakras and a Kundalini that leads to perfectly balanced beauty that only one of the select ladies can achieve. "They say that she opened up her Kundalini..." was a line intended to be mysterious but not translated with the best sounding interests. By the first lesson it's evident they're in some kind of dark cult with supernatural powers over their new followers that cause them to perform complex yoga moves in a trance and fall victim every time they break the rules that were thought to be just for show. South Korea becomes even smaller when Hyo-jung's boyfriend gets linked up when visiting a director named Kang who casted Kahn Mi-hi, the owner of the Yoga studio, in his movies. He's not sure where his girlfriend went and proceeds to investigate, leading him to a story involving a tragic incident that happened on a movie called "Shadow of Youth" where rivals Eun-shil and Kahn Mi-hi played opposite.

The major strength of "Yoga Hakwon," or "Yoga" in the US, is its mood and some built up scares that are more abstract than logical. The yoga angle starts to show its limitations where a share of the film takes place outside of the studio setting, only to kick it up and save a share for its highly atmospheric closer that effectively plays on surface sensations no doubt but also needs footnotes to make sense of. Before that point other threads are introduced to compensate or to divert your attention. This jumps back and forth with a variety of story arcs but ends up moving around so much as to lose context. Some of the transitions seem somewhat awkward, at times overemphasizing areas and in other portions underemphasizing; like they're dressing up a simple scene to be more than it actually is but throwing the audience off as to which is which. Should you look into it more or less?

The movie is incredibly enigmatic about its references and situations to the point of confusion. Some of the exposition is a little backwards in that it will go through a certain scene with a vague amount of information, then after the fact drop a line that explains what was going on. Despite, this is drenched in atmosphere with darkly lit sets that have a cold and ghostly look with certain camera angles getting full use out of them. In some instances there are no reference points to brace yourself on to the point of feeling like a general haunted house where anything can go. It's a film that isn't entirely sound but delivers some memorable scenes and an uncomfortable feeling nonetheless like any decent horror film should. The performances carry some charms, with some possessing more of a captivating look to others adding a little quirkiness.

The effects are pretty effective looking with anything from slashes materializing on a neck to producing festering boils. There are also situations that blend CGI for more complex situations such as swiveling bodies that would make an owl jealous. The premise still gives room to think with how you're viewed in other people's eyes: how some try and live up to other's expectations, while the more comfortable of us act ourselves. Yep, being content munching potato chips on the couch never stopped anyone, yet others have to do something about it to the point of obsession and ruining the beauty they once held onto.

Rating: 6/10

Director: Jae-yeon Yun (Whispering Corridors 3: Wishing Stairs)
Link: IMDB

From Within (2008)

Smalltown Hypocrisy, USA

"From Within" is a drama/thriller with elements of horror and the supernatural that includes religion, intolerance and stubbornness in an area called Grovetown that's full of small town views and a local legend that's on the hush hush. A teenager that looks like a goth reads from a book in an odd tongue while sitting next to his girlfriend. He pulls out a revolver as casually as if it's a picnic basket and shoots himself with the horrified girlfriend as a witness. She runs into town a bloody mess as if being chased from something and dies by her own hand as well. From then on out, each unlucky person who was the last to see the person commit the act or their body dies.

The perspective of the small town is shown through another teenage girl named Lindsay who goes to the local high school as well as attends the local church and likes the minister's son at both places named Dylan. Rumors spread about the connection to it all and blinded tempers and closed-minded fears come out. Dylan gets into a fight with a soft spoken kid named Aiden, who's not a member of the church and the brother of the first teen to commit suicide. Lindsay drives him home and there it comes out about Aiden's mother dying in a suspicious fire out back from a fear that she was a witch. Ominous threats are in the air as if a battle is about to ensue with opposing religious beliefs. The local Sheriff sweeps speculation under the rug which causes Lindsay to meddle before anything drastic breaks out. As the suicides begin to pile up, the minister's son holds some clout over the town and takes matters into his own hands with Lindsay caught in the middle between Dylan and Aiden.

"From Within" offers a series of intermittent, sudden scares mixed with the main body of a small town drama that reveals some skeletons in its closet. Some of the pop outs seem too in your face with crisp effects that have tendency to be caught in the frame for too long, leaving out anticipation or mystery as to what it is or how it came to be. On the one hand, it's not going to be as enigmatic as "The Broken" was but parts of it feel too simplified nonetheless. Some of the deaths start to seem less and less random as they so happen to coincide and are spaced out with current events. It takes away from the it-could-happen-to-you-at-anytime nervousness. Though in some areas right before the person is going to get it, it does play on the something-lurking-over-your-shoulder angle with the audience being a witness but helpless to the fact. The one by one death sentences almost seem like something out of "Final Destination" though somewhat less elaborate. Some people go quickly, while others at a later time when convenient to the narrative.

The subtext here concerns religious hypocrisy on both sides that are using it with their own interpretations or how they deem fit for personal gain. There's also intolerance and stubbornness even when faced with some facts. If there was ever going to be an exceptional example of the mentioned, Grovetown is that place. No one is all the way in the right here and that sentiment comes without resolve and a bleak conclusion that it got so out of hand. This is redneck stuff we're dealing with so guns, pick up trucks and beer play a role when it comes to accelerating action. Some of the personalities are caricatures that make the story a little black and white and somewhat easily deciphered. It makes you wonder if the filmmakers didn't think the audience would get the point, hence the obviousness and exaggeration at points. Elizabeth Rice as Lindsay sticks out with a decent portrayal and a share of emotions across the board to feel for her character's actions. Thomas Dekker as Aidan and Kelly Blatz as Dylan get a little more range than the supporting cast but still play their parts with only a few steps outside the box, so essentially you can count on their next moves, which takes away from surprises. This is a little more catered for the late teens crowd, though overall this was a decent enough experience with an actual story and message to share for the experience.

Rating: 6/10

Director: Phedon Papamichael (Dark Side of Genius)
Stars: Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Kelly Blatz, Adam Goldberg
Link: IMDB

The Broken (2008)

Scared of your own reflection?

An English radiologist named Gina gives her father a surprise birthday celebration and during the festivities a mirror suddenly breaks. She gets a strange feeling at work as if someone was in her office. Then on the way home, she spots a woman that looks identical to herself driving her same car. She follows the look alike and enters her apartment only to see a photo with her image and her fathers. Puzzled, she leaves but gets into a car wreck on the way out. Gina wakes up in the hospital with a fuzzy memory regarding the crash and a sneaking suspicion that her boyfriend, Stefan, is not really her boyfriend. The doctors call it Capgras Syndrome, which can result from a brain injury. With the help of a therapist, she unlocks bits and pieces surrounding the accident. From a dripping ceiling, to more mirrors being broken and others acting strangely to her, Gina sees danger at every turn where more people are out to get her due to a delusion made worse by the crash or something else.

"The Broken" is mainly a mystery/suspense film that for a share of it does the genre justice with little nuances and slight shifts that make those films so gripping. Revelations come about as it gradually paces itself and the audience is let on to more and more of its secrets. Unfortunately the growth of the plant slows down and it eventually squeezes less and less of the nectar out of its storyline. After a certain point it goes from a kind of Hitchcock-esque pacing to a sort of extended Twilight Zone-like episode that pulls out a magnifying glass and inspects a tainted situation underneath everyone else's nose. Its drawback is that it's too light on some of the rules and mechanics and then motivations for its antagonists, which makes it more easy than encapsulating the full potential that it could have been. It had every right to be a thoroughly challenging classic but didn't take it that extra few steps. I liked the engaging experience it laid out but the more it's thought about, the more it comes with contradictions.

If one can look past that, the film's major strength is getting full use of its surroundings with an atmosphere to lock a viewer into the direct moment. It's not everyday that films can make one forget their surroundings and responsibilities. It's to the point where every other person and object becomes suspicious and paramount as a result. A neat idea is employed with abrupt flashes to remember the past and some surreal imagery to translate Gina's troubled state. This uses basic but still powerful mechanics due to built-up anticipation and careful crafting beforehand, such as deja vu, sleeping next to someone you immensely distrust, being vulnerable in the shower, and also someone you recognize that doesn't act like their old self, making you instead question your own self and mind. Needless to say, this has a share of creepy and unsettling moments, rather than going for the throat with its shock value. It's titillating at points but not always forceful like other horror films.

There's a share of stringed instruments that no sane person could listen to and not tense up. "The Broken" seems to be made to play on nerve endings by not letting the viewer relax for long till another pulsating situation arises. It has that down pat though it could have used a few more areas in its story that hint more at what's going on, especially for motivational reasons, otherwise the viewer is left too much in the dark as to what, how and why after the credits roll. It seems to be a film less for the theorists and more for those that appreciate the ride and surface sensations in the moment. I have to admit, for the most part, it did keep me from thinking outside of the box that it presents when I was actually watching it since there was always something either intriguing or rousing going on. This still works with a shred of ambiguity, but the scales are still tipped a little more away from the viewer. It mainly plays on a general sense of paranoia for those that are broadly suspect, as well as has some calculated areas for the logical minded, even if it doesn't go full steam ahead for the skeptic's sake.

Some parts carry a message of sorts, such as securing and appreciating your life as someone or "something" else might take over when you have your guard down. It's more of an undeveloped "what if?" question that will make some people fascinated just because of the idea itself as well as gravitate towards its heavy use of mood while at it. However, with some others I'd imagine it might leave a person more puzzled or frustrated without fully fleshing out a bigger picture from the questions it posed itself. It's not to the point of ambiguity like "Silent Hill" but should be kept in mind before stepping into its alleyway with dark and looming shadows that you might never figure out what's always a step behind or what they're doing there...

Rating: 7/10

Director: Sean Ellis (Cashback)
Stars: Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins, Melvil Poupaud
Link: IMDB

Voices (2007)

An explanation for why murder/suicides really happen

Have you ever wished someone around you would just die or go away but kept your actions to yourself? Hey, hey, not all at once. Well, getting along with those you normally have to isn't even an option here. One thing that should be learned about the experience is that it isn't very liberating, just a dark and deplorable look at primitive emotions that were thought to be left back in the cavemen days. This is a supernatural horror tale from Korea that centers around a teenage girl where those that get too close try and kill her.

After a horrific opening scene with a family getting mudered, it plays out with some humor and good natured vibes, until a woman named Ji-sun falls off a balcony at her own wedding. If that wasn't enough, when she's in the hospital her sister brutally stabs her to death. There appears to be certain violent tragedies in the family with kin killing kin dating sometime back. Her niece, a teenage girl named Ga-in Kim, is having nightmares about "something" out to get her, which makes her ill. She's in the nurses office when she gets attacked by someone who is jealous about an earlier event. The morose new kid at school gives her advice that it wasn't just an "accident" (must have been a mistranslation to mean "coincidence" instead) and that she shouldn't trust anyone--friends, family and herself included. Soon enough more attacks happen and she tries to piece it together that it may be a curse by asking her auntie and older relative about what's making people out for blood.

Part of the story doesn't transition as smoothly as it could have, that she would just go with it that it is a curse. The people don't always look ghostly and often speak with her during the attacks. Now, from an audience's point of view it may be more effective at making you think back when someone has killed their family or friends that they didn't look any different either. Though from her character's point of view, they're just jealous of her happiness. Possibly Asian culture has a closer acceptance of superstitions, but for some skeptical western audiences there isn't always more of a convincing element to make you cross over with her. The rules of its mythology are spread about, so part of its own mechanics don't always line up about when certain people become violent and when they don't. Or what pulls them out of the trance and what can keep that going for a longer period of time. There are some effective uses of anticipation but this usually jumps right into them to make sure you still have a functioning heart beat. It makes the events happen more at random than the filmmakers intended them to since it tries to do the whole one-by-one format like a slasher and string it along till an ending revelation that might make sense then but not always during.

There's a kind of hidden moral message here with jealousy, rage and hate fermenting inside for those that might have better opportunities than you. It deals with temptations to erase that person from this world that is causing you so much pent up turmoil. Whether you give in or not is possibly an option I'd imagine--at least I'd hope for the sake of the human race--but this keeps it downbeat in that everybody is susceptible to a risk of seeing nothing but red. There are no heroes here and the relating points that you might find to the character's lives are trampled at some point for scares and shock. This is told from Ga-in's perspective, so at certain points the story is heavily elusive--more like a never-ending nightmare than a typical narrative unfolding--and it's hard to make heads or tales for a share of it till the end as a result. The atmosphere is somewhat depressing in that she has to eventually avoid human contact and goes around in a state of confusion.

"Voices" tries to make you lower your guard by showing a scary scene, then a positive one, then back to putting the fear of murder back in you. It delivers a sort of black-and-white, tense-and-relax type of formula that sprinkles some personality and dramatic moments into the characters to make it more impactful when a senseless and unexplainable situation of violence ensues. This mode of filmmaking doesn't always come with a natural tone and flow by at times resembling a template to manipulate the audience into a certain emotion. Part of that keeps this just a cinematic experience than an organically occurring possibility. This is cruel and bloody for the morbid onlookers, and the performances are well-received in either behaving normally or crazed. "Voices" has some neat ideas to work with, they just weren't all told in an appropriate order, and would have made more sense watching this from the ending to the beginning. Sometimes I wonder if surprise endings are worth it, as some filmmakers, western ones too, want to hold on to that twist for dear life, even if it can jeopardize part or all of the rest of the picture.

Rating: 6/10

Director: Ki-hwan Oh (Art of Seduction)
Link: IMDB