31 Days of Asian Horror: Kaal (2005)

Written and directed by Soham Shah, Kaal follows the story of a group of wildlife experts trying to collect information about a string of attacks and deaths that are attributed to a man-eating tiger.

Whether intentional or not, Kaal is a campy thriller that tries to be scary and doesn’t accomplish any of that with overacting and a generally terrible plot. The story takes a while to get going, and really only jumps into actual tension and intrigue towards the latter half. The problem with this is that the movie is over two hours long, forcing you to trudge through an hour of random bickering, not-so-great characters, and overdone jump scares that attribute nothing to the overall story. It takes a while to be somewhat interesting, and that’s only after the turn. The movie is just not good enough to dedicate that amount of time and falls flat even when it starts to get sort of interesting.

The tigers used in the film are real, opting to not use any sort of computer-generated ones, which is a slight bonus to the overall story. The movie spends a lot of its time in this area of trying to be a solid thriller, but unintentionally going over into the campy horror side and using the tigers worked a little bit more to ground a lot of it when dealing with those scenes, even if the rest of the movie didn’t follow suit. I wanted a fun creature feature but was left with a boring 2-hour movie, that didn’t go anywhere and takes itself well too seriously.

Kaal is currently streaming on Netflix.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Pool (2018)

It’s Creature Feature Friday and today’s pick had been sitting in my Shudder list for a bit too long. Written and directed by Ping Lumpraploeng, The Pool follows Day (Ken Theeradeth Wongpuapan), who was working on a film set using a pool. He stays after to clean up the set and becomes stranded in the empty pool with a crocodile and his injured girlfriend, Kay (Grace Ratnomnot Ratchiratham).

I really wanted to love this movie, I really did. It just was executed so poorly that it made it an exhausting watch. This movie is when every bad thing that you could ever think of comes perfectly together to target one singular person. And for a creature feature, that would normally work. The problem lies in that the film takes itself too seriously and tries too hard to be a solid thriller and wanting the audience to not think about how absurd everything that is going on is that it completely misses the mark. It wanted to capitalize on the realness of the event that the absurdity of this perfect storm was completely unrealistic. All that being said, I did like how the crocodile was portrayed. The goal of the movie was to ultimately focus on the pool being the big bad, and not the creature. It takes a while for you to realize that, and it is a good twist that the movie did well working that element well. The crocodile was as just a victim as Day and Kay were, and thus the actions of the crocodile were much less over the top and real.

Spoiler:

Another major misstep in the movie was the death of his dog. It was unnecessarily gruesome and placed at the end solely for a reaction to an audience. At this point it does fit with every absurd thing that could go wrong did, but it was an obvious ploy for reaction that was not warranted and did absolutely nothing for the plot, nor help with the horror. It was a ridiculous writing decision.

The Pool is streaming on Shudder and AsianCrush.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Psycho Shark (2009)

I’ve been fairly lucky with the movies that I picked to review for this month that I hadn’t seen yet, but then Psycho Shark came. Nicknamed Jaws in Japan, I had so much hope for this movie. I didn’t think it would be the best, but I really wanted to find a fun and campy creature feature and I don’t think I can describe to you how far off this movie hit. It’s almost a waste of a day to devote a review to it, but if I can make sure someone doesn’t fall for it like I did, then my work is done. I can excuse a lot of things with creature features. I can be ok when the creatures defy physics or the acting is bad. The CGI can be terrible and the movie can have no plot. But somehow, Psycho Shark saw that as a challenge and test my patience. It had so much potential in the beginning, I thought that they would play with the found footage or that there was going to be some play on Psycho because of the name. And just like every other thing about this movie, it let me down. You don’t even see the shark until the last ten minutes of the movie.

Yes. You spend the entire movie waiting for the shark, and sans a dream sequence where we see a shark 3/4 of the way through the movie, you only see it once. I can’t even summarize what goes on during the rest of the movie because nothing goes on. A girl scared and shocked replays a video over and over, girls dance and shower in bikinis…there’s a beach?

Psycho Shark is on Tubi but even for free it’s not worth it. Thankfully lovely people on YouTube did God’s work and clipped the shark scene at the ending so you can watch it and not have to sit through the entire thing. I admit it’s a pretty enjoyable scene, but you literally have to wait for the entire film to get there and it’s just not the payoff you want or need.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Mon Mon Mon Monsters (2017)

It’s Creature Feature Friday and today we are going to Taiwan to talk about the 2017 horror comedy directed by Giddens Ko, Mon Mon Mon Monsters. The movie has been sitting in My List on Shudder for a very long time. I’d put off partly because of time, but also partly because I knew it was going to be a comedy and needed to be in the mood for it before pressing play. As I began watching I thought I had made a mistake, the first 15 minutes or so of the movie is sort of hard to get through and focuses on a trope that I tend to stay away from (bullying), but the introduction of the monsters in the first minutes of the movie made me intrigued enough to power through, and I’m glad I did.

Mon Mon Mon Monsters follows Lin Shu Wei (played by Yu Kai Teng whose most recent credit is Tree in the River), a high school student who is constantly tormented by a group of students in his class. When the teacher assigns the group and him to do some community work they encounter a monster, capturing and torturing it. They uncover secrets about its power and use that to continue their terror. The film has sort of an easy and somewhat overused plotline, with the moral of the piece being a fairly used plot: the exploration of how humans can be much more monsters than actual monsters. Ko has stated in interviews that at the time of working on the project he was having a hard time as he was caught up in a public affair scandal. Using the hatred he was receiving from the public about it led to the creation of the text.

“But when I started to work on the script, I found I couldn’t exclude myself from the horror, so the project developed into a more personal story.” (source)

The pacing is executed well and hones in on the narrative, getting darker as the movie progresses and felt the movie had some genuinely good scares and the creepiness level of the monsters worked well. Without giving too much away, the monsters are closer to vampires but the narrative never confirms this, and the way that they interact with each other and humans is just different enough to make it an interesting take on a smashup of different creatures. Eugenie Liu (Triad Princess) plays the eldest of the monster sisters. I’m familiar with some of her other work and was impressed by her interpretation of the monster. For most of the movie I didn’t even recognize her - not just because of the makeup. The pacing of the comedy also worked well for me, and while there is a bit more of the over exaggerated puns and gimmicks, it fits the characters. Despite their horrific acts, the main characters are underdeveloped kids and I think the story did a good job to remind the audience of that every once in a while. They are immature and I think a lot of the comedy is just a mirror of the kid’s immaturity not understanding the severity of the situation, and how they are breaking the tension of the situation rather than the movie trying to interject it. The comedy dissipates when it needs to, and it was never a jarring tonal watch for me.

I really enjoyed the movie much more than I expected to. Once I got past the bullying in the first part, which I mentioned is a trigger for me, I was able to start to relax and focus on the story. While a lot of what happens is not unexpected the story is intriguing and some of the characters had great layers to them that were able to be executed as the story unfolded. There are some genuinely great scenes. The bus scene, for example, was a highlight and perfectly accomplished a mix of horror, gore, and worked as a great way to convey the raw emotion of the monster and it didn’t just add a showy spectacle. The ending also stuck the landing, making it an all-around great watch.

Mon Mon Mon Monsters is currently streaming on Shudder.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Host (2006)

It’s officially October, and day one of the 31 Days of Asian Horror! What better way to start than with a personal favorite genre and one of my top Korean movies, the 2006 monster movie The Host.

After a military scientist flushes down a liquid that enters the Han River, a creature is created that makes landfall and takes the daughter of a snack bar attendant, Gang Du (Song Kang Ho). Written and directed by Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), The Host follows Gang Du’s family’s fight as they try to get back Hyun Seo from the creature and the obstacles that the creature’s presence creates.

The Host is a little bit different than most creature features, as it focuses it’s satire through the characters and not the creature. It combines action horror with an underlying plot about the background of the creature, the public’s response, and a larger coverup. The character’s are constantly grounded. The film portrays a view that is closer to what would happen in a situation like this rather than other action films with a super-powered hero that gets everything right.

We see this throughout the film not just within the main characters. The way the crowd reacts when the creature first emerges, throwing beer cans into the water or the white male hero trying to take down the creature to only get eaten within minutes. No character is necessarily good or evil. They all lack the skills to survive unlike normal main characters in an action film and the plot allows for those faults to work within satire and comedy that doesn’t go over the top. Even the way the government and the police handle it, and how the citizens who weren’t at the river view what happened, all help form a smart and entertaining story that keeps you guessing even when you think you have it.

Korean films, in general, tend to focus on families (related or found) as it is engrained in their culture, and khorror does not stray away from it. Much like films such as Train to Busan or The Quiet Family, through the wackiness of the central plot The Host focuses on the underdogs working as a team and the importance of them all working together to become the hero. At the end of the day, The Host is a focus on the importance of family and the fight (to help family or those in trouble) makes you a hero even when you don’t think you possess those skills.

I highly suggest watching this movie even if you are not a horror fan. It’s a fun watch that will keep you entertained and engaged throughout. The movie is wacky, quick-witted, and has a lot of heart.

If you are looking for more movies similar to this, I suggest giving Chaw a chance. I previously reviewed it here.

The Host is currently streaming on a number of sites such as Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Tubi and available on Blu-Ray/DVD.

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Chaw (non-spoiler) Review

I am back to reviews after a week off (sorry about that, last week was a little too busy and I didn’t plan ahead well). As I hinted towards in my Creature Features post, today I am reviewing the 2009 dark comedy monster film, Chaw.

Chaw’s premise is super simple: a mutant pig terrorizes a small rural town that has seen no deaths in years, and a ragtag team is formed to stop it. Director/writer Shin Jeong Won stated in an interview that he came up with the idea to do the movie when he kept getting comedic scripts that didn’t match his comedy. He wanted to do a monster movie and was “intrigued by the idea of a familiar animal attacking and killing humans and wanted to create something out of this unexpectedness. But most of all, I wanted something funny and unique.” He picked a boar because it’s the most well known animal that creates the greatest amount of destruction. (source 1) (source 2).

Apparently, Shin and I would get along great, because I loved how the comedy was used in this film (and probably would have hated all those comedy scripts he was sent). For the most part, when we deal with the boar and its destruction, the comedy isn’t used or played up which allows a lot of the satire to lie in the quirkiness of the town and the characters outside of incidents with the boar. The comedy really just helps to form the backdrop of the town and the characters to give you a sense of who they are and why they are responding the way they are. Seriously, I’d watch a drama of just this town and all the people in it. I read someone comparing it to Twin Peaks, and I’d have to agree. If you combined Twin Peaks with The Host, you’d get Chaw if that helps you figure out what type of movie you’re getting yourself into.

The boar was a mixture of animatronic and CGI. As a lover of practicals, I really liked it a lot. The pig was created by an FX team in the US and it took three years to create along with all of the stuntmen and costumes. All the work paid off, as it works well and really helps some of the major scenes that the actors are with the creature in the same room and interacting with it. There is a bigger fight scene towards the middle where the CGI and animatronic was used, it integrates pretty nicely within the scene and doesn’t take away from what’s going on.

I think what also helped the movie to not feel too cheesy was that the design of the boar leans more to a realistic copy of a boar and focuses the scare more on it being a real life problem as opposed to trying to make it some weird hybrid sci-fi creature that looks unknown. They describe it as a mutant, but really it’s just a larger boar…that poses a much higher death count. I felt that it also helped keep the comedy’s focus on the characters, as there wasn’t a time you were supposed to find the boar a weirdly funny creature and helped it feel much more like an actual boar, which was essential for some of the later scenes.

I really suggest checking out Chaw if you have the chance. I don’t think it’s talked about a lot, mainly because it probably gets overshadowed by The Host and just the general lack of monster films coming out of South Korea. It’s fun, aware of its campiness, and integrates it well so that it doesn’t over saturate it. The characters are equally as fun and quirky and the main team works well together and are perfectly incompetent. They are a great found family with heart.

Chaw is currently streaming for free on Tubi with ads.

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Korean Creature Features

I have a true love for creature features, they are fun and just make me happy. My love prompted me to go on a search for some Korean offerings and while there aren’t many Korean ones, so I thought I’d share with you a handful. I haven’t watched all of the below list, but they were the ones that I personally was most interested in. Let me know in the comments below if you know any more that I should add to the list (not just Korean, from anywhere - I’ll take notes for later).

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The Host - 괴물 (2006)

Starting the list off with, in my opinion, the best option, The Host has probably everything you can possibly want. A fun creature, a goofy dad just trying his best to save his daughter, and Bae Doona. Seriously, if you haven’t watched this yet, push it up the list. Currently streaming on Hulu, but it’s good enough to own on Blu-Ray if you don’t have access.

Chaw - 차우 (2009)

You’ll probably hear more about this soon (hint, hint), but this 2009 movie has a man-eating boar. What more could you possibly want? Nothing, I say. Nothing.

Monstrum - 물괴 (2018)

I’ve talked briefly about this one in my Current Korean Horror on Shudder post. It’s set in the Joseon era, where a monster emerges. I probably won’t get to this one for a while, but just the fact that there is a plague happening and the result is not a zombie outbreak gets me excited. I love you zombie movies, but I love weird creatures so much more.

Yonggary - 용가리

If Godzilla-like monsters are more your speed, Yonggary might be the answer. It’s also sort of the oddball of the grouping, as even though it is a Korean production, the main cast is made up of American actors. And it’s on Tubi!

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