WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
I’m sure when I talk about Asian Horror in general, the first country that would spring to mind would be Japan – what with Ju-on and Ringu being pretty famous Asian horror films. This doesn’t mean that horror films don’t come out of other parts of Asia as you will see below. However, I feel like the South Koreans sometimes spend a little too long on the overall story line and maybe forget the horror part…
The Host
I don’t know if it’s the way the Koreans write their films but I am finding it hard to refer to this as a horror. Yes, you can definitely refer to it as a ‘creature-feature’ but outside of that there isn’t exactly much ‘horror’ about it. No one the creature takes actually dies as we see it regurgitate them into the sewer. Weirdly, there’s a point where it’s as if the film predicted the COVID-19 virus because they talk about yellow fever that can be caught as ‘presenting like the common cold’ and everyone is walking around with face masks on!
The Call
I have been dying to watch this film since I was told it was so scary people had to turn it off and I will never pass up that challenge! At first, I wasn’t sold on this being a horror film at all – just some slightly dark time travel film but I think I judged it a little too soon. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions – well it seems that Young-sook’s good deed turns foul when jealousy takes a hold of her as she no longer has Seo-yeon’s attention to herself and in saving her life, Seo-yeon’s good deed puts a serial killer out into the world! I still won’t say that it’s so scary I had to turn it off but it is your typical slow-burner before the really dark stuff starts to happen.
Zombie for Sale
I started this film by thinking Se-ah Jang was playing the most useless zombie in the history of zombie films as he fell over trying to eat two women and ran away from a dog. The film is pretty cheesy, just not as cheesy as Dead Sushi which I covered previously for Japanese horror. I wasn’t overly sure that this lived up to the title of ‘comedy-horror’ because, fair enough, it’s funny but there’s very little horror to it. Jjong-bi, as they go on to call him, only bites one person before his teeth are removed and that character doesn’t even turn at first, instead he just feels young. At first, there’s more violence in Shaun of the Dead than this but all hell starts to break lose with 45 minutes to go. However, the relationship between Jjong-bi and Hae-gul reminds me a lot of Warm Bodies.
A Tale of Two Sisters
Having mentioned Ju-on at the beginning of this article, the creepy goings-on in this film remind me very much of it. I’ll say this much, though, I was a little confused about when the opening scene takes place whether it is after the events we see later in the film or before. This film actually shocked me a little because even though it has the same twist as a previous film discussed in another article, I didn’t pick on it this time round! Actually, at this point you do start to question what is real and what isn’t (not in a creepy David Cronenberg sort of way) until everything is made clear at the end. However, that doesn’t make the ending any less creepy!
#Alive
OK, so this is the second zombie film on this list but I would say this is more what you would expect from your regular zombie film – running, screaming, feasting even though it’s not filmed like your usual zombie flick! Instead the majority is filmed from inside Oh Joon-Woo’s apartment, as he does finally leave and does interact with two other characters. For once this film doesn’t take its time to get into the action, especially with the little surprise of the young girl eating her mother! The way she calls out for her and the way her mum walks, I genuinely thought it would be the other way around. I also love the fact that it’s not your typical zombie turn, of the person dying and then just waking up again. Instead, very early in the film, we watch stage by stage as Oh Joon-Woo’s neighbour goes from perfectly fine to zombie. There’s A LOT of cracking and I won’t pretend it didn’t make me uncomfortable!
Thirst
What I love about this film is that, for me, it is a horror comedy without being over the top with the comedy. Truthfully it’s not very heavy on the horror either other than the fact that the priest develops vampirism. I wonder if their aim with this film was a criticism of science and the Christian belief towards it as it is Sang-hyun, a priest, joining the experiment in to the Emmanuel Virus that turned him into a vampire in the first place. The true violence doesn’t start until about an hour into the film and I think most of that is caused by the fact that Sang-hyun falls in love and had sex with Tae-ju so maybe it is also a remark on sin. However, I actually think it turns out that Tae-ju is the real monster of the film.
