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This anthology of Asian horror stories (known as Saam Gaang in the East) was retitled THREE EXTREMES II for U.S. home video, which is doubly misleading: THREE precedes 2004’s THREE EXTREMES by two years, and it is far less extreme in terms of violence and perversity, instead offering moderately interesting variations on the traditional tropes of Asian horror films [...]

Surfing the Internet the other day, I stumbled upon an advertisement posing as an article, which posed the question, “What is the Asian secret to strong lush hair?” I did a screen grab, so that you can see what I am talking about without having to click through the link:

As you can probably guess, my [...]

Livin' It Up, Dead-Style: Song Kang-ho feasts in THIRST
Turns out in Park Chan-wook’s universe, revenge may be sweet, but blood is just plain tasty. In THIRST, a priest’s benevolent attempt to aid medical researchers turns around to bite him in the… well, let’s say neck, when a blood transfusion transforms him into a profoundly conflicted [...]

ALONE is an Asian import – not from the usual suspects Japan or Korea, but Thailand (technically, the film is partly set in Korea, but it is a Thai production). Although not a masterpiece, it is an intriguing tale told in a suitably spooky manner, offering evidence that, nearly a decade after the J-Horror wave [...]

[ July 31, 2009; ] THIRST - the bloody vampire-drama-tragedy from Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook – has been scheduled for a July 31 release in the U.S., courtesy of Universal Studios’s boutique label, Focus Features. Fans of Park’s earlier work (OLD BOY, SYMPATHEY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, LADY VENGEANCE, THREE EXTREMES) will see much that is familiar, but this time the meticulous cinematic [...]

THIRST – a new “vampire romance” from Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook (LADY VENGEANCE, THREE EXTREMES) – is the first Korean production completed with Hollywood financing (courtesy of Universal Pictures). The film (which is about a priest who is turned into a vampire when an experiment goes wrong) will be screening in competition at the Cannes Film Festival [...]

Despite some effective scare scenes WITCH BOARD: BUNSHISABA is a disappointing horror film from South Korean writer-director Byeong-ki Ahn, whose PHONE is one of the best of the Asian ghost movies to follow in the wake of RING. All the familiar elements are back in place (the dark-haired ghost girl, the girls-school setting, etc), and [...]

By the diminishing standards of American remakes of Asian ghost stories – a phenomenon that descended to the dismal depths of  the infernal gulf with last year’s not so terrifying trio of ONE MISSED CALL, THE EYE, and SHUTTER – THE UNINVITED must be reckoned a kind of success, though not an exalted one. This redo [...]

THE EYE (based on the 2002 film by the Pang Brothers) is the lastest in a series of remakes inspired by horror films from Japan, Korea, and China. American audiences first became aware of this trend in 2002, when THE RING (a remake of Japan’s 1998 gem RING) was released to blockbuster success – nearly [...]

A movie does not have to be good to be entertaining. If there were any doubt about the truth of this axiom, along comes DRAGON WARS (subtitled D-WAR on screen), offering up conclusive proof. By no reasonable reckoning can the film be considered a competent piece of cinematic storytelling, yet somehow the movie transcends its [...]

As you may have noticed, Cinefantastique Online is offering a heavy dose of Korean horror today. In honor of the nationwide release of DRAGON WARS (which had its Hollywood premier last night), we’re offering a handful of retrospective reviews on recent Korean imports: the recent excellent monster movie THE HOST; THREE…EXTREMES, an Asian anthology featuring an episode [...]

Derived from the Japanese film RING (a.k.a. RINGU, 1998) and the novel that inspired it, this 2000 film from South Korea is more or less an equivalent of America’s THE RING (2002): that is to say, it is a remake that does little artistically to justify its existence; mostly, it simply rehashes the original with a [...]

This 2000 release is the work of South Korean writer-director Byeong-ki Ahn, who went on to make the excellent PHONE, but it is not quite up to the level of that subsequent work. NIGHTMARE (whose Korean title translates as “Scissors”) plays out like a supernatural-slasher-film murder-mystery, with lots of flashbacks, little detective work, and some [...]