Korean Horror Flicks

Pre-Korea, I had taken about an eight year break from scary movies.  While I have always loved a good scary movie, The Ring was so frightening that I took an indefinite leave of absence from the horror world.  Being that Korea is so well-known for having bizarrely twisted and gory thrillers, I have made a conscience effort to start tiptoeing back into them. 

Last night, a friend and I saw my second horror movie here, 미확인 동영상, or Don’t Click. Since I am in Korea, obviously the movie was in Korean with no English subtitles. It’s not difficult to grasp the plot though. There is an internet video that is being passed around and once you watch the video you die. (Sounds a little The Ring-ish to me…)  Anyway, for each person that watches it the video is a recording of their now imminent death, like a premonition but not really.  Does that make sense?

Here’s the kicker…  This entire country is set up on what is called CCTV, or closed circuit television.  The little black surveillance globes that you see on the ceiling of every store in America happen to canvas this country.  Elevators and hallways, roadways and alleyways, my classroom, parks, the dumpster outside of my building….Literally canvas the country.  The only time that I feel confident that I’m not on video is when I’m in my private apartment and, really, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a camera hidden somewhere that I just haven’t found yet.  In the movie, all the deaths were recorded on CCTV.  There is a demon girl of sorts in the movie that is ultimately responsible for the killings, but she somehow controls the cameras so that they change direction, zoom and focus as each death happens. Given that we are all constantly surrounded by CCTV cameras (that we now know are potentially plotting our death), I thought that was quite an intriguing if not paranoia inducing plot. 

I feel certain that this does not make sense to anyone that has not seen the movie and even some that have. Sorry.  Writing synopses of foreign films where I don’t completely understand the plot myself is not my forte in life. 

Anyway, here is the trailer of the movie WITH subtitles.  If you are in Korea, go watch it!  If you are not in Korea but have an interest in horror films, download it.  It’s definitely a respectable scary movie.