Director
Kim Tae-Kyung
Cast
Kim Ha-Neul Min Ji-won
Ryu Jin Park Jun-ho
Nam Sang-Mi Su-in
DVD Release Date: April 24, 2007
Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 94 Minutes
The Movie
Min Ji-won is a young girl in college who is kind of a loner. She keeps to herself and actually likes swimming more then she does studying. She has no friends except for one boy by the name of Park Jun-ho who she does everything with. They swim together, attend the same classes, and always hang out just with each other. It is obvious that Jun-ho would like more out of their relationship, but with Ji-won recently being accepted to go study abroad, she is hoping they can merely stay good friends.
While her chance to study abroad brings her many opportunities, it has also brought her much grief. She has lost all of her memories from when she was younger and cannot understand why, but now chooses not too. Through the help of much therapy, she is taking the chance to go off and start a whole new life. But her mother makes her feel guilty for leaving her alone just as her husband did when he passed away.
Life begins to take some weird turns for Ji-won as an old friend of hers from high school tracks her down to let her know their other friend had died in a freakish accident. Well low and behold, this friend who had come back into Ji-won’s life also dies in a weird drowning accident. Not to mention that Ji-won’s mother now is being very sweet and kind when she wanted nothing to do with her daughter mere days ago.
As the weird events continue unfolding, Ji-won starts having recurring nightmares and flashbacks to when she was in high school. The more her memory starts coming back to her, the more she realizes that she was a very mean person in her younger years. Ji-won starts digging more to find out what happened in her past and why all of her old friends are dying. She soon starts finding out that all the bad things going on have more to do with her then she ever imagined.
We have a simple case here (again) of “please come up with something new for your story.” The fact that it’s all been done before is not what makes The Ghost completely devoid of entertainment. It’s the fact that the film is just quite dull. With ideas taken from not only other Japanese horror films like Ringu; it also goes as far as to take the premise from I Know What You Did Last Summer and try and recreate the idea of a quick death made popular by the Scream trilogy.
There just isn’t anything new to look for and the film doesn’t help its own case by dragging so horribly in between death scenes. After the first kill, there are twenty minutes of slow and incredibly boring nothingness. It is almost as if they had tried to let the audience get to really know the main characters so that as things started to happen to them, we’d be affected by it. But they overdid it by carrying on and on about Ji-won’s amnesia and making things quite confusing.
The Video
The film is seen in 1.66:1 Anamorphic Widescreen and looks really good. For once in a Japanese horror, not everything takes place in the dark or at night. There are a lot of scenes during the day and bright colors actually who their faces and look beautiful. Crisp picture with good looking colors makes for a nice way to view a crappy film.
The Audio
The film is heard in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and just is not too good. The music and jump scare drumbeats are way too loud for the rest of the film. The dialogue can be heard fine at a reasonable level and so can other sounds like splashing in the pool or people laughing. But when the music starts up, it is excessively loud and sometimes deafening if you have the volume turned up to where you can hear people talking.
Special Features
Cast Interviews – A very short feature (six minutes) that is exactly what it says it is. The cast are asked a couple questions each and they give their responses. Every question is simply about what the film is about and them trying to sell the story, nothing more.
Behind The Scenes – And now an even shorter feature (right under three minutes) that is supposed to be a “behind the scenes” segment, but there is nothing to it. All that is shown are the crew filming, random comments from the cast off camera, and the actors getting make-up on to become ghosts. Quite possibly one of the more worthless special features I’ve ever seen.
Original Theatrical Trailer
TV Spots
Trailers – Cinderella, Shutter (The Original), The Red Shoes, A Tale Of Two Sisters, and The Heirloom
The Inside Pulse
This is not a good place to start your horror collection, nor is it a good place to continue it. Skip over this one because you’ve probably seen it millions of times before and done in a much better manner. Throw in less then fifteen minutes of special features, and you get nothing for your dollar by buying or renting The Ghost. Kind of confused as to why they even bothered putting the special features on there considering how worthless they truly are. Oh well, go grab a copy of I Know What You Did Last Summer instead. You won’t have to read subtitles and you can stare at Jennifer Love Hewitt. Double bonus.
