U.S. DVD Release
How many of you enjoy riddles? Great, I’ve got a hard one here so listen closely.
What do you get when you cross Ringu with Ju-on and Dark Water and a few bits and pieces from various Korean horror films?
*waits*
Okay, I’ll tell you…The Ghost. That’s right The Ghost is one giant clusterfuck of everybody else’s A-horror (Asian Horror) films and guess what…IT STILL WORKS RELATIVELY WELL! Believe it or not The Ghost does stand on its own two feet albeit with the aid of crutches and corrective shoes. Fact is it wasn’t all that bad. Perhaps I’ve just come to expect the large majority of Asian horror films I watch to be nothing more than Ringu clones and have learned to enjoy them?
Perhaps.
Here’s one thing I would like to bring up though. During my extensive studies of Asian horror cinema I’ve come to the realization that…Asian men do not die. I’ve seen countless Asian horror films and don’t believe I’ve seen any male ghosts aside from a male child or two. I sense a little sexism afoot here! Can’t men hold grudges from beyond the grave? Why are men confined to the afterlife while women get to come back and start all kinds of shit as if they’d never died?!! *sigh*
Ji-won Min is a girl without a past after a traumatic experience leaves her with amnesia. Despite the burning questions she has about her past and the accident that left her blank she continues on building new friendships. Life really begins looking up for Ji-won and she’s even planning on leaving home to go abroad for further schooling when she’s visited by a young woman with a mysterious picture connecting Ji-won to three other girls. Could these young women be part of her past? Perhaps friends erased from her memory? She’s informed that the three women have begun seeing strange things and it’s blamed on Ji-won and something she’d done before the amnesia. What happened to Ji-won and who is Su-in?
As memories slowly return to Ji-won she’s shocked to discover the person she was before the accident wasn’t a very pleasant person at all. The surviving girls don’t want to seem to talk about Su-in but Ji-won already has a feeling she had something to do with her disappearance. The more fragmented memories Ji-won regains the more she begins realizing just what might be stalking the girls. The real question is though…can Ji-won trust her memories?
Whatever the reason for men being shunned from the role of spectral stalker, The Ghost features a long-haired ghost girl and that’s probably no big surprise. There are one or two effective scares sequences and one impressive twist that make this a worthwhile rental though. I think one of the biggest problems with this film is the constant shifting from plot to sub-plot and character to character without knowing who is who and what importance, if any, the sub-plots hold. Yes, things do slowly come together and when all was said and done I do believe I was a bit impressed. Yeah, impressed. There was a really clever little twist to this clone that almost shook me from the hook but I hung in there and it really worked well.
The acting, FX and antagonist were all commendable but I saw nothing truly original in The Ghost that may help the film to stand out from the rest. Director Tae-kyeong Kim wrote the screenplay for this so he really has nobody to blame but himself for the cribbed elements present in this film. Everything here is exactly what you’d expect from a film described on the box art as “The Grudge Meets Dark Water” so if you’re hoping for something new and different, look elsewhere.
Those of you interested in finding out more about this production should take a few minutes out of your busy schedules to take a peek at the cast interviews, behind the scenes featurette, TV spots and original trailer. Good on Tartan for adding a bit extra.
The Ghost will more than likely fade away into Asian horror cinema obscurity and it’s truly doubtful that it’ll ever be “re-discovered” as an underrated cult classic so I really can’t recommend you purchase this for your collection. If you’re an Asian horror junky and find that you must see this at any cost, rent first. While The Ghost may have enough shine to warrant checking it out, ultimately it’s still Asian horror cubic zirconium. Still…not a bad way to spend 98 minutes.
