Geoul sokeuro
AKA Into the Mirror
Director: Sung-ho Kim
Starring: Ji-tae Yu, Myeong-min Kim, Hye-na Kim, Ju-bong Gi, Myoeng-su Kim, Young-jin Lee, Eun-pyo Jeong

(out of 4)

You're Doing It Wrong

Geoul sokeuro, the South Korean horror mystery that we’ll refer to from here on as Into the Mirror, is a movie that isn’t sure what it wants to be. In a sense, it suffers from a split personality similar to the one it deals with - it wants to be half detective drama and half supernatural ghost story, and it almost succeeds, except that the drama part is so drawn out to the point of tedium that I welcomed any supernatural occurrence to help break up the monotony. The real point though, is that the elements and camera trickery used to depict the movie’s supernatural happenings - in this case mirrors - should have been used in a more psychological sense. Instead, we must take it as a given that a ghost can enter our world through the mirror image; a better idea would have been to leave it up to the audience to decide that.

She's so vain.

The movie begins in a department store that is about to re-open after a fire that occurred a year earlier. A woman employee, who also happens to be a klepto, is getting ready to leave when she is apparently killed by her own reflection in the mirror. Enter Woo Yeong-min (played by Ji-tae Yu), chief of security at the store, who used to be a detective but quit after being indirectly reponsible for the death of his partner. (He tried to shoot the bad guy holding his partner hostage but instead shot at a mirror out of confusion). After a few other employees end up dead (killed by their reflections) Woo and the police, led by Heo Hyeon-su (Myeong-min Kim), begin separate investigations, occasionally bumping heads. (Heo still blames Woo for the partner’s death). Thrown in the mix is a woman who supposedly died in the fire (Lee Jeong-hyeon) and her twin sister Lee Ji-hyeon , just out of the mental hospital. Of course, the twin claims that the image she sees in the mirror is not really her reflection but her dead sister. So we have a disgraced detective, filled with guilt, faced with an opportunity to get his honor back, much angst on the part of the major characters, greedy owners who just want to open up the store again, and some foul play behind the scenes suggesting that Jeong-hyeon didn’t really die by accident.

Director Sung-ho Kim makes very clever use of mirrors, although I never really wondered too much about how the visual effects were achieved. For example, if a person’s mirror image starts moving around I can usually guess that the person outside the mirror is a double. What impressed me, though, was the fact that Sung-ho Kim hid his cameras so well! The idea of the “other” in the mirror has been explored before - I specifically remember John Carpenter’s Prince Of Darkness (which, like this film, suggests another reality on the other side of the mirror) and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 (where Ash’s mirror image jumps out at him). A character in the film suggests that the mirror represents a second world with a second ego, as perceived by someone with a split personality. The person suffering the split thinks he is seeing two different (symmetrical) worlds. “The person is psychologically divided in two”. This explanation seems to fit in with the WTF ending (think of Silent Hill instead of The Sixth Sense), but then how come the movie bends over backwards to show us ghosts? And why have the ghost use mirrors anyway when the movie makes it clear that the ghost can manipulate objects and come into our reality at will?

Man, I don't know what to tell ya!

I still enjoyed Into the Mirror more than the usual Asian ghost story, which too often likes to use long haired creepy girls (the Ringu phenomenon) for the spook factor. The movie covers interesting ground but there’s just not enough of it, as if the creators didn’t truly believe in their mirror-world hokum and tried to keep distance from it as long as possible so they can bring us a melodramatic detective story. I can’t completely blame them, as the supernatural elements are scattershot and never really come together in the confusing ending. Sure, the ending is neat, but it’s nonsensical. I am hoping that the American remake (Mirrors) starring Kiefer Sutherland tones down the ghost and gets more psychological. But who am I kidding - the thing is directed by Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes remake) a guy not exactly known for subtlety.

-Bill G

Resident Evil - Apocalypse (2004)

Director: Alexander Witt

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Thomas Kretschmann, Sophie Vavasseur, Razaaq Adoti, Matthew G. Taylor

Written by: Paul W.S. Anderson

1/2 (out of 4)

Here’s my multipass, bitch!

Straight from the lower levels of Hollywood hell comes “director” and “writer” Paul W.S. Anderson - another member of the idiot club that includes Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, Stephen Sommers, and Ewe Boll. What better representation of the damaging effects of the MTV culture than his Resident Evil movies? Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the second film in the trilogy and it makes the first film look like a masterpiece. And believe me, the first film was no picnic. This time around, however, Anderson assigns himself screenwriting duties only and gives the director’s chair to second unit man Alexander Witt. It didn’t help.

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Lost Souls (2000) 1/2 (out of 4)

Directed by: Janusz Kaminski

Starring: Winona Ryder, Ben Chaplin, Sarah Wynter, Philip Baker Hall, John Hurt, Elias Koteas

Bless the Child (2000) (out of 4)

Directed by: Chuck Russell

Starring: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Holliston Coleman, Rufus Sewell, Angela Bettis, Christina Ricci

she can steal my clothes anytime!

The “Devil Movie” bandwagon probably started in 1997 with The Devil’s Advocate, but the closer we got to the year 2000 the faster Tinseltown executives starting jumping on it. After Stigmata, End of Days and The Ninth Gate came these two religious thrillers - Lost Souls and Bless the Child - each one with their own special take on the imminent end-of-world scenario where, apparently, angels and demons have great supernatural powers but not enough to stop a bullet. Both movies concern the return of a Biblical figure - in the case of Bless the Child it’s Christ and in the case of Lost Souls, the Antichrist - the believability of the scenario in each film is stretched beyond the breaking point, even if you consider yourself a Christian, so it becomes necessary to suspend your disbelief and accept the concepts these films use as a foundation. Once reaching that point, how does each film fare in terms of plot, characterization, acting, suspense, and so forth?

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For Halloween night, or for any late Saturday night for that matter, Horror Fan Zine would like to recommend ten of some of the cheesiest horror movies ever put down on celluloid.

If you’re feeling particularly cheesy this evening, grab yourself some Fontina and settle down with these, um, “classics”

Ten Cheesy Horror Movies

10. I Drink Your Blood (1970)

Well don’t just stand there! Grab a plate!

I Drink Your Blood came out in 1970 on a double bill with I Eat Your Skin. It was the first film to be rated X by the MPAA based solely on violence. This is probably because of the nude Satan worshiping, rabies-infected zombies, grandpas force-fed acid, violence done to pregnant women, heads ripped off, and extreme water-hosing.

Yes, a bunch of Satanist hippies (really, are there any other kind?) attack a local family in various ways until little Pete decides to feed them rabies-infected meatpies. Big mistake - pretty soon a rabid plague has spread to the entire town.

Fortunately, the infected have an intense fear of water. This is where the water hose comes in. Obviously, this exploitation film was meant to cash in on both Night of the Living Dead and the whole Manson debacle. It was pretty twisted for its time. Hell, it’s pretty twisted today.

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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon, Johnny Depp, Amanda Wyss, Ronee Blakley, Jsu Garcia

(out of 4)

WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD

Some 22 years later, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street still manages to offer up a creepy supernatural atmosphere and retain its ability to disturb through its creative dream sequences, even if, in 2007, I can no longer be “scared” by it (having seen the film countless times as well as its innumerable offspring and knock offs). But it is necessary to point out the importance of the film in the realm of both horror and 80s cinema. Most people today know who Freddy Krueger is, but the first Elm Street is the only one where the character is kept truly dangerous and frightening, and paradoxically, it’s the one with the smallest budget but the biggest ambitions.

How about a big hug for Uncle Freddy?

A Nightmare on Elm Street concerns a small group of 80s teens who are haunted by the ghost of dead child killer Fred Krueger (played with gusto by Robert Englund) in their dreams. The catch is that if they die in their dream, they die for real. Eventually, it’s up to resourceful Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) to stop Freddy by bringing him into the real world and finishing him off.

The main plot of the film makes for a superb jumping off point for Craven to work all sorts of literal and subtextual magic. If nothing else, you have an intriguing take on the 80s slasher movie, post Friday the 13th. The boogeyman comes to your dreams - no longer “out there” (woods), the danger is now with you everywhere. He has burn scars all over his body, wears a dirty hat and red-and-green sweater, and uses a glove with knives for fingers. Not only are your parents part of the problem (all the parents in A Nightmare on Elm Street are either delusional, self-absorbed, drunks, or a combination of all three) but they caused the problem in the first place (torching Freddy in his boiler room). Consequently, the movie is a perfect example of the “sins of the fathers” being visited upon the sons (Exodus passages as well as Euripides, Horace, Shakespeare). Speaking of Shakespeare, there is an effective dream sequence where just before Nancy sees her dead friend in a body bag being dragged across the school hallways, her classmate whispers a passage from Hamlet: “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”

You might as well throw those sheets out.

It cannot be overstated how much the movie represents (criticizes) the era in which it was made. The parents (John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Donna Woodrum, Ed Call, Sandy Lipton) of Elm Street are worn out, tired. Nancy’s parents are divorced and they hide things from her; their brand of paternalism is not to be trusted. They have to deal with blowback from things they did in the past. The small town suburb is no longer a source of protection, and it harbors dark secrets. It’s an anti-Reagan film alright, but it also plays upon suburban paranoia, predating films like Blue Velvet and Arlington Road.

The teens, played by Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, and a new-at-the-time Johnny Depp, are likeable, and their death scenes are effective and gory. England, of course, is the one who holds it all together. Here he plays Freddy with a subdued menace, which would be thrown away in subsequent sequels in favor of silly one-liners. But this Freddy is a repulsive killer, and Craven wisely keeps him in the shadows most of the time, for a more unnerving effect. Another good move is how the editing delivers seamless flowing between the dream world and the real world. The result is disorientation regarding whether a character is dreaming or not. The suggestion that the entire film may be a dream plays into the idea that Reagan’s America, in Craven’s view, was collectively asleep. A Nightmare on Elm Street is a classic of the genre.

- Bill Gordon

Maybe try Open House another day…

The new release of the Nightmare DVD sports a nice remastered 1.85:1 print with DTS and Dolby 5.1. The commentary track featuring Wes Craven, John Saxon, and Heather Langenkamp is the same as in previous releases, but there is a new second commentary track carrying interviews with Wes Craven, producer Robert Shaye, co-producer Sara Risher, and others. There are new Infinifilm segments, the most interesting of which is the history of New Line Cinema and how the Elm Street movies made it successful. Different versions of the ending are included, but it’s really just the same ending but edited in slightly different ways. (My personal opinion is that the ending can be interpreted as both Nancy’s dream and her mother’s. This seems apparent when Nancy is driven away but the camera still focuses on her mother and her mother’s point of view. )