Customer Reviews

Nightmare

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nightmare could've been done a lot better, but then again, it could've been done a lot worse. You all should probably know a little about the storyline, so I'll just go into what I think they could've improved on:

1 - The first half of the movie was confusing and slow. Sure, they tie it all together at the end, but they could've made the retracing of what happened in the past more apparent. I was watching the movie in present-time and had no idea they were retracing the characters' previous actions. For a while, it felt like several random scenes were being pieced together which was apparently supposed to make sense.

2 - The make-up effects were laughable. The ghost looked like a goth chick and wasn't that scary at all.

3 - The movie assumes you know everything about the main characters. The characters go around and talk about specific things to each other more than half-way into the movie which should've been brought up/hinted on/foreshadowed earlier as to avoid confusion. The characters hold connections to each other that just felt tossed in just to make the relationships seem more dense.


Yeah... if they would've spent a little bit more time going over everything, they could've made the storyline easier to follow, thus making the movie more enjoyable. Oh, and they should also take a few notes from their Japanese horror counterparts because the ghost was seriously not scary. But don't be dismayed... everything comes together in the last 30 minutes of the film (making everything a bit more intense), and the ending was actually kind of cool, so the movie is at least worth being rented first.

"Nightmare," by director Byeong-ki Ahn, is neither a very good horror film, nor a very good slasher film. The film begins with a pretty good start: You witness the body of a young girl in a morgue who is having her eyes stitched shut. Fast forward into the future, and the films narrative begins with a a group of former college friends who are being killed off one by one. Is this the work of a mentally unstable woman? Or is it the vengeful spirit of one of the groups former friends who was accidentally killed years before? The film leaves you guessing as to whether or not this is the work of either a killer, or a ghost. Or maybe both?

As the films narrative moves along, you see a young woman, Sun-ae (Jeong-yun Choi) who has just returned from the United States, after a two year absence. Moreover, she is hiding out in one of the friends' apartment; and she believes the ghost of this vengeful spirit is out to take revenge and kill her. The viewer sees Kyungh-ah (Ji-won Ha) as the vengeful ghost who is on an unstoppable mission. Or is it? As the bodies begin to pile up, some of the friends are warned by detectives that one of the girls, Sun-ae (Jeong-yun Choi) has been in a mental hospital, and is either the killer, or maybe in danger herself. She has sought refuge in the apartment of one of her friends, who was also once part of her inner circle of friends: Hye-jin (Gyu-ri Kim).

These few survivors are what remain of the college friends who know of the terrible secret regarding Kyungh-ah [aka: Eun-ju]. Although this film was probably inspired by "Prom Night," that is not the problem. The major problem with this film is the scriptwriting and cohesion of the film itself. The film is very disjointed, and the back and forth flashbacks from past and present were a little irritating. And while the film was not really original, I could deal with that. However, the film was slow and boring. This film will probably appeal to those who like slasher films, whether or not it is foreign. This is not the worst Asian horror film I have seen, however, the film just isn't that good either.

When a female friend of a group of seven returns to South Korea after a two year long visit to United States strange occurrences begin. These occurrences are related to the death of a woman that the seven friends once knew and it seems that the same dead woman is returning to them. The dead woman's return seems to be linked to a videotape that they all know about, but the question lies in what is on the tape. Nightmare is a horror film with some eerie moments and gruesome scenes, but the awkwardness of the story removes the engaging theme and leaves a flat cinematic experience as the suspense rests solely on separate incidents.

Nothing like Phone, although it tries to steal from it. Don't fall for it!
The story:A girl (Sun A) returns to Korea from two years in the U.S. She just shows up by her friend Hyun Jun's apartment(great actress)They catch up and Sun A tries to tell her that a ghost is after her. From flashbacks, we find out that they were part of a group of friends that now doesn't speak because something happened. The movie box says a friend dies, but the ghost/friend Hyung was never a friend. Apparently she killed herself and they hardly knew her, but feel responsible. Flashbacks throughout the movie because not all the former friends know everything about each other. They get together when they start dying, one by one, all seeing the ghost. But is the ghost doing the killing? Like Phone, there are things necessary to the story that aren't revealed to the end, and they try to almost follow the same formula - which just falls flat here. What I liked about Phone was the lack of confusion at the end and resolvement.. This is full of guessing. There is a desperate killer, there is a ghost, there is a coverup or two, and there is possesion at the end.
It's not bad, but I just expected more from the director of Phone.
Try Whispering Corriders instead.

Ha Ji-won is fabulous here, playing a Korean JHGC (J-Horror Goth Chick) with bangs and neatly combed hair. Just a little black around the eyes and she's as creepy as they come. And quite beautiful too. In fact, the only redeeming quality of this attempt to jump on the I Know What You Did Last Summer style of horror bandwagon is that all the female players are gorgeous. And they do a fine job acting. Beyond that, compliments are hard to muster.

I hesitate to single out someone for deep ridicule but the guy who plays the lawyer in this flick, his acting is so bad it's painful. He ruins the film. Well, a script that is convoluted beyond repair doesn't help but if it was the script alone it wouldn't be painful. There's an inverse relationship between the film's cohesion and the level of badness to this guy's acting. As the film falls apart, making suspension of disbelief nearly unattainable, this guy gets more screen time and becomes more obnoxious. By the time the third act rolls around it's a chore not to hit the eject button.

There are buckets and buckets of blood spilled and some of the kills are pretty good, and, much to my surprise as it's unusual in Korean cinema featuring young starlets, there's brief nudity, Ha Ji-won included. So it's got the ingredients. They're just not stirred very well. A group of friends, boys and girls, belong to an organization called "A Few Good Men". They (accidentally?) kill one of their members and try to cover it up by faking it as a suicide. The one who got killed is bummed out by it so she comes back and starts killing the members of the club, one by one. Good thing one of the members is a videographer and gets all of it on tape. Also a good thing that no one else in the community seems aware of all the bloodshed ... but I digress. The hilarious thing about this videotape is that it is magically done in third-person, if you will. Several times all of the characters are actually in the video. And the guy with the camera, just after assisting with pushing the deceased off a rooftop in the attempted fake suicide, flies out into mid-air, and even does a pull back, so we get a good view of the body going down and eventually landing on the roof of a car. I know this can be explained by security cameras, editing, and artistic license to splice in other people's points of view, but it's still hilarious when you watch it.

All in all there is some enjoyment to be had from watching a handful of attractive young Koreans go through the horror motions, but I can pretty much guarantee you will be groaning and moaning and pointing fingers and poking fun at this flick before it's over.

The plot twist itself I could see coming from a mile away, so I won't get into that. Not too many special effects to hinder or enhance. Overall it looks like a made for TV movie, albeit a decent one.

This simple tale of a vengeful girl ghost has a woman unravel the reason the ghost is bumping off her former college friends. Nice visuals. Pleasant young actors. This is the only film that I can think of where I looked forward to the ghost's appearance cuz the ghostly makeup of Ha Ji Won, if anything, enhanced her exotic blending of sultry-ness and cuteness.

Nightmare (Byeong-ki Ahn, 2000)

Let's start off by saying that you've seen this movie before. Many times, probably. Group of young-and-beautifuls shares dark secret that returns to bite them in the collective behind, and they start dying one by one. The subject of many a giallo, and later, many an American slasher film. Why not resurrect it in the Asian horror boom?

Well, I'll tell you why-- because it's not always the case that Asian horror is better than American (or Italian) horror simply because it came from somewhere west of Hollywood and east of Bollywood. While it has generally been the case that they do grow 'em big out there, some Asian horror films are simply derivative shlock that's, at best, worth killing an hour and a half with, and that's the case here. There's no real standout acting, the direction is competent if pedestrian, the movie relies heavily on Western tricks to make you jump out of your chair rather than setting the eerie atmosphere that makes so many Asian horror films of the last thirty years so wonderful. That said, the young-and-beautifuls really are young and beautiful, and like most bad genre horror/mystery flicks, it moves along at a rapid enough pace that it's not a torture to watch. So if you've rented every other Tartan Asia Extreme movie your video store has, this isn't the worst choice you could go home with. **

I rented this movie because it is directed by the person who did Phone, a Korean horror flick that I really enjoyed. I sat down to watch it in gleeful anticipation, only to be disappointed.
It seems promising; a young woman who has been in the States returns to Korea and checks up on her group of college buds. The woman, Sun Ae, drops in on her friend Hyun Jin and while there, makes some cryptic remarks about needing to escape from a girl who is dead. From this point, things fall apart. The dead girl, who may or may not be haunting them, appears to be killing off the band of buddies one by one. Meanwhile, there is a series of subplots about bad business dealings, and adultery. Throw a series of semingly unrelated flashbacks into the mix and you get a movie that is almost incomprehensible. On a second viewing (yes, I am a masochist), I was able to piece together that the dead girl's ghost isn't doing the killings. Instead, she is possessing the real murderer(s). At least, I think that is what is going on.
Anyway, go watch Phone, A Tale of Two Sisters, or Whispering Corridors. They are MUCH better examples of Korean horror.

I noticed that alot of people (who were American) gave the review to this movie a low star rating, which were mostly biased due to the types of horror films they are used to viewing. I myself am American, but I have viewed lots of foreign films and foreign horror films so I feel I am more open minded and have a greater appreciation for foreign films, especially because I feel that I am probably more cultured than the others on foreign horror. As far as a horror enthusiast who is used to American slasher films, they would most likely not enjoy this movie, but if you like horror in general without your own cultural biases, I feel that "Nightmare" was a pretty good film. It had all the makings of a good horror film,...suspense, drama, blood and guts and the flashbacks were easy to follow, as well as the story line. If people were "confused" about the story it was mostly because they are used to watching horror films that are styled to their culture. The only thing I did not like about this movie was that I wish it was a little more graphic with the killing scenes, which I feel is a personal preference. Other than that I felt it was a good film that had wonderful acting and dialogue.