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Director: Choe Won-kyung, G’sam, Jeon Byeong-deok, Kim Jang-mi, Lee Gwang-jin, Wally Seo
Year: 2024
Country: South Korea
Alternate Titles: Sin-Che-Mo-Eum.zip
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Hearing stories about a strange religious practice, a reporter decides to sneak into the meeting and record the events as they occur for a national breaking story.
Review:
The Reek-After her neighbor commits suicide in her apartment, a woman and her friends decide to look over her belongings which includes a fateful bottle of perfume. After being affected by the contents of the cursed bottle, her downward spiral of life and obsession with the bottle go hand in hand with each other. Overall, this is a pretty solid opening segment with a lot to like. The central premise works nicely enough to get to know her and her lifestyle firsthand before the encounter with the fateful bottle and how it starts to transform her life. The obsession with her nursing career, the frantic outbursts about being around foul-smelling people or objects, and the concurrent outcome that results are quite impressive as the reveal comes off rather nicely. The rushed nature of everything leaves this feeling somewhat muddled about how it all works and what's going on as there's no time to spell everything out properly, but otherwise, this is a fine start.
The Boy Who Sees Ghosts-Relentlessly mocked and bullied by his coworkers, a man who claims to continually see ghosts around the building offers a chance at redemption by showing them off to his bullies. Preparing a special ceremony for the process, a special twist to his plans puts everyone's lives in danger. This was a phenomenal short that has a lot going for it. This time, the briefer running time works nicely to set up the relationship between everyone immediately and get an idea of who everyone is within seconds as the desire to torment him for his ability puts them squarely on the list to get knocked off without remorse later on. This happens in spectacular detail as the ghostly beings and spirits released after the group are frightening and truly chilling with great motivation to do so. Even a slight twist in the works involving how he seems following the release of the spirits is quite impressive, not going the route expected which is all a credit to this one.
Exorcism.net-Attempting to help a friend of theirs, a group of students decides to set up their cameras and document a potential exorcism attempt to save their life. As the group starts to go through their paces to get everything documented, they realize they're up against something far more deadly than they ever imagined. For the most part, this one was rather fun and had a lot to like about it. The simplistic setup and classic exorcism tropes are brought out in full force immediately here, hitting the expected highlights of the deformed facial features of the possessed individual, shouting expletives in various unnatural tongues, manipulating the location around them, and many other highlights. Doing so in such a short time-frame might make it seem overly familiar with this all taking place alongside the typical shouting of Bible verses to counteract everything. However, the fact that the segment takes place over video as the exorcist is in a separate room from the possessed so it's all over the security cameras adds a fun element and switches it up from the usual story.
A Former Resident-Arriving in a new place of residence, a woman receives a bizarre message about leaving the apartment in perfect condition. As she tries to get used to the condition on top of her regular livelihood, she finds the supernatural figure she was warned about has followed her and infiltrated into her life. This was a somewhat likable if overly routine segment. The initial setup is promising enough with the strangeness of getting a new house and trying to live there on her own, but to tie it into the secondary storyline about the ghostly figure they're trying to get special trinkets left inside carries a special tone that is quite impressive. It adds a nice bit of tension and thrills alongside the increasingly frantic action that takes place as the secrets about the houses’ past are unraveled and revealed. It’s all just so formulaic and predictable with this type of ghost story not doing much of anything new with the premise or relying on predictable scares which hurts this somewhat.
String-Waking up as normal in his apartment, a man finds himself tethered to a strange rope around his neck tied to a woman in the same situation in her bedroom. Forced to find a way out of their predicament, a twisted kink in the setup allows for a grisly development that arises in the race to survive. This might be the weakest of the segments even though there are some solid aspects to it. The central premise of waking up with the strange rope tethering them together against their will and the conditions that arise make for a gripping premise, especially with some of the graphic outcomes that result as the two try to figure out a way out of the situation leaving some unexpectedly graphic bloodshed and wounds along the way. It’s just so rushed and underdeveloped that there’s very little about this that makes sense with the purpose completely missing and no point behind it as there’s not much in the way of explanations given. It’s still fun enough but is a weak spot in this regard.
Body Parts-Hearing stories about a strange religious practice, a reporter decides to sneak into the meeting and record the events as they occur for a national breaking story. As the other participants in the order go through sacrificial offerings for their ceremony, she discovers a deadly secret about the group that threatens everything around her. Overall, this is a solid and serviceable enough wrap-around segment. The reason for her arrival at the compound and going through the motions of the ceremony being conducted for the sake of the story is a fine touch as each part of the sacrificial offering is unleashed. That serves everything well enough to introduce each of the segments based on the gifts presented which is a fun way to get the interstitial elements going preparing everything together so that it all has a lot to like. The final bit is way too obvious and doesn’t have any kind of surprise to it, but there’s still a lot to enjoy with it.
Overview: ****/5
Featuring plenty of great stories and not too many issues, this one has plenty to like about it which makes for a far better time than expected here as there are some minor flaws present. Those who are hardcore anthology fans, appreciate this kind of Asian genre effort, or are curious about it will have the most to like here while those turned off by any of the factors here might want to heed caution.
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