After Donkey punch, Them and Eden Lake, it’s amazing there’s still a lonely locale for the unwitting to be terrorised in. Won Sin-yun’s variation on the theme is just as prone to cliché as the aforementioned, but there’s a savage intelligence at work, as unctuous professor Lee Byeong-jun and his female protégé Cha Ye-ryeon are menaced by a rustic cabal. Power shifts often as expectations are confounded, with the actions of kidnapped pupil Kim Shi-hoo and cop Han Suk-kyu forcing the viewer to rethink who the psycho really is. Won’s critique of the abuse of power in South Korean society lacks trenchancy, but he subverts convention with an incisiveness lacking in much transatlantic horror.
A Bloody Aria
A Bloody Aria 2006
Half as amusing as that viral video of a sheep scaring its peeps while wearing a Halloween mask, A Bloody Aria is also less incisive. Directed by Shin-yeon Won. With Ye-ryeon Cha, Suk-kyu Han, Kyeong-ho Jeong, Shi-hoo Kim. On a day trip through the countryside, aspiring opera singer In-jeong flees to the woods to escape the advances of her lecherous professor and mentor, Yeong-sun.