GHOST

Tartan Films 2007

Directed by Kim Tae-Kyung

I’m not sure what’s worse: derivative Japanese horror in America, or derivative Japanese horror in Japan. I hate to say it, but I believe the Oriental style of trying to frighten the life out of you with two standard and typically un-scary items has blown its last tire and seriously needs to pit. I’m not entirely certain where the lore of Japanese ghosts gets its ‘roots’, (that line will be hilarious in a second) but it seems to be based primarily around hair and water. Every time someone returns to some poor, hapless Far Eastern person’s life from beyond the grave, said spook generally has straight, long, and stiff black hair masking her face allowing just an eye or two to shine out and add to the dramatic effect. And the real icing is that this very same apparition is, nine times out of ten, wet. So goes it to the letter with the Tartan-released movie, GHOST.

Although I absolutely can’t stomach the Patrick Swayze / Demi Moore vehicle of the same name, I think I’d have rather watched that one… at least it was slightly original for its time. This film, however: not so much. Some poor girl called Ji-Won is suffering a serious memory loss due to, well, something, the viewer never really gets the whole story, just a jumbled mess now and again played out in dream sequences. So, Ji-Won is in college and is contemplating taking a job abroad but her mother is a nut-ball as well, so she feels a bit bad leaving her all alone to die off by her self. Enter the mysterious guy who appears to be the only other person at the college to actually want to hang around with Ji-Won, aside from the woman herself. They date, swim together, nearly drown together… ah, young love.

At this point Ji-Won’s old school chums, who have been haunting her dreams, begin dropping like flies thanks in part to some old curse from a ghost they accidentally brought “out” of an Ouija Board in the beginning of the film offering us the one and only sort of creepy scene in the whole deal. As it turns out, on top of this mangled disaster of a plot line, there is this other little girl called Su-In who was a friend of Ji-Won’s back in school, too, and she was killed for not taking Ji-Won’s SAT’s with so little remorse or concern as to be compared to tossing out a ripped sock. It has become Su-In, apparently the restless spirit from the game in the early part of the movie, who has turned into our antagonist. And guess what? She’s wet, all the time, and has those raven locks with the piercing stares. Wow, what a concept! Oh, and the Japanese-to-English translator within the Subtitle MATRIX was a joke; all of the American references were slaughtered and none of the subtle humor even vaguely squeaked through. So sad.

Well, the end is just as obvious, and if you’ve seen any one of the Japanese films transformed into silly American releases (save for the RING, still the best), you can easily figure it out. If you’ve seen one, well, you know the rest of that played cliché… no matter how overtly true in this case. Still, all in all, not entirely a waste of a Saturday night, but the sixer of vanilla porter was nice, too.

Stew Miller