INSOMNIAC SONG
MOVIE AND TELEVISION REVIEWS
HORROR
Cinderella (2006)
Starring: Do Ji-Won, Shin Se-Kyung, Ahn Gyu-Ryun, You Da-In, Jeon So-Min
Directed by: Bong Man-Dae
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Rating: Not Rated
Run time: 97 minutes
Synopsis: Seeking the much-desired quality of ul-jjang (the perfect face), 17-year old Hyunsu's friends are envious that she has a plastic surgeon for a mother. On their summer vacation together, she watches as her friends get plastic sugery and then one by one begin to mysteriously die. Hyunsu's mother holds the key to dark secrets that have been tucked away until now.
Cinderella is, on the surface, a horror film about women who die after having plastic surgery. Beneath this first impression, the movie is about the lengths that a mother would go to in order to protect and care for her child. Yoon-hee is a very overprotective mother. She's a successful plastic surgeon who operates her business out of the lower floor of her home. Her daughter, Hyunsu, isn't allowed to go do the things that her friends are. She can't go clubbing with them or skip her classes even though it's summer vacation. Yoon-hee doesn't want to risk that anything could happen to her daughter. This overprotective nature extends even down to Hyunsu's beauty care routine. Often, her mother will even bathe her or apply spa treatments to her face.
Over the course of summer vacation, Hyunsu's friends begin to come to her mother for plastic surgery. These girls are by no means ugly in terms of physical beauty. At the most, they would be average in Korean societal standards. The only one of her friends not to go under the knife is the tomboyish Seong-Eun. It's Seong-Eun that Hyunsu is closest too and often confides in. The other girls seem to hate Seong-Eun, but Hyunsu ignores their feelings toward the tomboy. It's unclear whether the other girls have shunned Seong-Eun because she's uninterested in the typical Korean obsession with beauty or because of Hyunsu's closeness with her.
As the girls have their surgeries, they begin to see and hear strange things under the influence of the anaesthetic. These strange things happen even after their surgeries are over. 'I'll make you pretty.' It's the common theme through out as the ghostly figure of a girl is seen. People begin to die after having the overwhelming desire to injure their recently altered faces. What is Yoon-hee's connection to these deaths other than having operated on the teenagers?
Hyunsu has never been allowed down in the basement of her home. It's a place that her mother has never wanted her to go. What's hidden in there? Exploring the basement, she finds a photograph of a severely burned child that has been labeled 'Hyunsu before surgery.' Was this her? Will visiting her father, whom her mother divorced years earlier, give Hyunsu any insight into what's going on?
At this point in the film, we're beginning to realize that all is not what it seems. The most important themes are the obsession with beauty and a mother's love. How many secrets are hidden from Hyunsu? How will these secrets effect her as things begin unravelling? Again, this wasn't a film that I found frightening. However, it did provoke some feelings on a different level. I found myself feeling sympathy for Hyunsu, despite how spoiled she was. However, it was the ghost that made me feel the most sorrow. I won't go into detail as to why because I'd rather not give any further spoilers. Was the price for beauty worth the pain that it causes?
Rating: 3/5
HORROR
Day of the Dead (2008)
Starring: Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon, AnnaLynne McCord, Ving Rhames
Directed by: Steve Miner
Rating: R
Run time: 86 minutes
Synopsis: When a small Colorado town is overrun by the flesh hungry dead a small group of survivors try to escape in a last ditch effort to stay alive.
There are so many things wrong with this movie that I'm not sure where to start. It's probably one of the most poorly written and directed zombie movies out there. I don't mind the concepts of zombies being able to love or retaining memories/abilities. Those were all things that George A. Romero tried to add to his films. The biggest problem with this is lackluster performances from the actors. Aside from that, apparently getting bitten by a zombie turns you into full rotten corpse in seconds.
Rating: 1/5
THRILLER
Last Kind Words (2012)
Director: Kevin Barker
Starring: Brad Dourif, Spencer Daniels, Alexia Fast, Sarah Steele
Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 1 hour, 27 minutes
Synopsis: 17-year-old Eli has just moved with his family deep into the backwoods of Kentucky to work on the isolated farm of a local recluse. Inexplicably drawn into the strange forest that lies beyond the farm, Eli encounters the beautiful, sweet and mysterious Amanda, seemingly the perfect girl. But with the discovery of decaying bodies hanging from the trees, he realizes that the forest - and Amanda - are harboring some very dark secrets. Suddenly, Eli is living in a waking nightmare where the lines between life and death are scrawled in blood, and there is no escaping the terror from beyond the grave.
I ended up seeing this on a whim over Netflix. The synopsis leads you to believe that it will be some sort of horror movie. Even the posters lead you toward that conclusion. What you really get is a sprawling movie that can't decide what it really is. Is it a coming of age love story? Is it a backwoods yawn about a twisted family? Or is it the horror that the filmmakers promoted it as? The answer to all of these ends up being no. This isn't quite a love story nor is it a story about a twisted family. Overall, there is nothing in this film that I would use to define as part of the horror genre.
Last Kind Words suffers from too many plots and no commitment to any of them. Eli's family moves to a farm after his alcoholic, religious father loses his job at a factory. It's made clear that they have no where else to go. The father is abusive and his mother is a skittish woman who runs from conflict. Yet, there really isn't much time devoted to exploring the family at all. Aside from a few fleeting encounters with them, most of Eli's time is spent in the woods.
He's drawn to the mysterious Amanda who he meets on the farm. We're not really given much backstory on her until much later in the film. While we wait to find out what her story is, we have his parents and, Waylon,
the reclusive friend who owns the farm. It's clear that the two elder men have a history. They seem uneasy around each other, but are obviously still friendly enough that Waylon would give the father a job on the farm. In the midst of this, there's Katie, Eli's friend, who shows up wanting to run away from her own family. We aren't really given a chance to connect with any of these characters. The majority of them could easily be discarded.
A slow pace doesn't help this lack of commitment to any of the possibilities for the plot. Despite warnings to stay out of the woods and away from Amanda, Eli continues to venture into the very places he was told to stay away from. Who is this girl? Why is she lurking alone in the woods? By the time the reasons were revealed, I found myself more confused than I'd been from the start. There were simply too many things
going on and little resolution. Alexia Faust did well as Amanda. The role wasn't very difficult for most of the film. The tasks of walking around in the woods while looking pretty and sad aren't too difficult for most girls her age. Some of you might remember her from Supernatural (season 7, episode 13) where she played Dean's daughter, Emma.
The resolution of the film left me feeling even more confused. Certain decisions were made that seemed a bit iffy. All in all, there were too many questions that didn't get answered fully. The slave's story was never really given in any depth. It was merely used to tie up a possible loose end. The boy and his father in the opening sequence were pushed aside in a similar fashion. I can't set aside the issues in this one. I could see where the filmmakers wanted to go...and they simply didn't make it there. Watch it for the scenery. Don't expect too much from the plot.
Rating: 1.5/5