2002
Rated: R for graphic violence.
Genre: Supernatural Thriller Drama
Directed By: Chang-Jae Lim
Running Time: 1:35
Review by: Lillian Patterson
Review Date: 7/17/08
Special Features:
On The Set
Interviews With The Actress And Actor
Original Korean Trailer
Photo Gallery
Tartan Asia Extreme New Releases
HAYANBANG

 

What is it with pregnant women being in horror movies? In foreign horror movies, no less. American horror movies would shy away from daring to show a pregnant woman in peril or even hinting at it like this movie does. This movie hints at a lot of horrible things. Women are dying in very supernatural ways after they visit a certain website (no, this isn't feardotcom, don't worry). The dead bodies of these women give the impression that they were pregnant, though their families and friends insist that none of them were pregnant. It's up to a detective and a female reporter to find out the truth, which involves a pregnant woman who died horribly and left behind a creepy painting and a curse. Lots of ghostly mayhem ensues. Several creepy images appear throughout the movie, and they made my heart pound.

Too bad it feels like this movie took a lot of better Asian ghost movies, threw them in a blender, and plastered the result on film. The filmmakers here don't seem to realize that the REASON these images were creepy in the other movies is because they had a story and a plot to back them up. Devoid of those things, they're nothing but images. Creepy little girls wandering around can be scary, but not if they have no connection to what's going on, or if their connection isn't explained. Where did the little girl come from? Did the woman give birth to a ghost? If so, did every one of the women who died give birth to the same ghost or are there lots of little ghost girls running around, and if so, why did we only see one?

As you can probably tell, this movie frustrated me to no end. First of all, the characters make huge leaps of logic. Five minutes into the movie one character says "these women died after visiting this website." How did that come up in the investigation? Did every one of the women's friends and family interviewed volunteer this information? How did the families and friends find out in the first place? Secondly, the characters make some of the dumbest moves I've seen in awhile. If you found out that every woman who visits a certain website dies 15 days later, would you visit the website? Not to mention the question of how they found out that it was 15 days later that the women died in the first place. How did people know the exact date of when the women visited the website? Did they memorize the date?
 

I don't wander around memorizing the dates my friends and family click on certain websites. That's just ridiculous. It's almost as if the filmmakers were trying to rip off feardotcom. Someone should tell them that when you want to rip off a movie, rip off a good one. Though I appreciate the idea that someone wanted to rip off feardotcom, which in itself was very derivative, lifting all of its scary images from better movies, this movie sucks all the fun out of the idea by being just as terrible as feardotcom.  

Now now, calm down and stop yelling at me. I know this movie didn't REALLY rip off feardotcom, I'm just saying this "killer website" idea isn't working for me. It's not a bad idea, and it would be nice if someone would take the idea and make a good movie with it, but no one has; instead we get this dreck which isn't any better than the dreck that resulted the last time someone tried to make this idea into a movie. I love Asian horror movies. The idea of curses and spiraling evil from which there is no escape get under my skin and haunt my dreams, and I avoid watching these movies before going to sleep for that very reason. For an Asian horror movie NOT to scare me, that movie has to be inept in every way, and this movie is. It doesn't even make any sense. Aside from
the problems mentioned with the assertion that every woman dies 15 days after visiting this website, the reason for the deaths is never made clear. Is the pregnant ghost killing the women? Is the pregnant women's ghost child killing the women? Why would you move into an apartment where a dead ghost woman lived when you knew that you only had 15 days to live after you viewed her website? These dumb character moves don't even service the plot, they seem to be in the movie just to pad the running time, since there really is no plot and nothing makes sense. I wanted to like this movie, but it didn't give me much of a choice in the matter.

Every image in this movie is taken from other, better movies. Watch one of those instead.

 

 

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