((summary taken from azntv))
고死 : 피의 중간고사 / Gosa

A chi-chi private high school, which actively encourages cutthroat competition among the student body by, for instance, publicly displaying their exam score rankings, selects twenty elite members and organizes a boot camp of sorts, to prepare for an international student exchange event.

To their chagrin, the students, including rebellious heroine Ina (the singer Nam Gyu-ri), her timid best buddette Myong-hyo (Son Yeo-eun) and her wannabe-boyfriend Hyun (the sit-com idol Kim Beom), and the teachers, uptight English teacher So-young (Yoon Jeong-hee, TV's Happy Woman) and popular Korean instructor Chang-wook (Lee Beom-soo, City of Violence) find themselves stuck inside the school. Somebody is kidnapping students one by one, in the order of their midterm score ranks, and killing them. The gruesome ways in which they die are broadcast via the school AV system: the only way to prevent the hideous murders is to find correct solutions to the culprit's "exam questions" in time.

Cast: Lee Beom-Su, Yun Jeong-Hee, Nam Gyu-Ri, Kim Beom
Director: Director Chang


My Rating:


I was extremely disappointed with this movie.

For one, after reading the summary and watching the first five minutes, I got the impression that it was going to be a lot like Battle Royale or even Saw. Instead it turned out to be just another Whispering Corridors-type clone, and not a very good one. The concept seemed original at first glance (at least for a typical Korean horror movie); however, what starts out as a promising premise is quickly overshadowed by a ton of horror movie clichés, and many unanswered (and stupid) explanations.

Personally, I liked the idea of students being kidnapped one by one, and how the class was being forced to work together and solve the puzzles in order to save them. Unfortunately, the writer and director started taking it in a different direction shortly after the game was introduced. Rather than having the class play the game like it's set up, it follows the typical horror trend... students rebel, groups start to split up, a crazy kid stalks the campus... and the game becomes secondary with only two or three people actually bothering to play. Instead we're forced to sit through some dumb investigation while several of the main characters search for the culprit.

That, and I STRONGLY disliked the ending...


SPOILERS

Throughout the entire movie, it's obvious that there's some kind of supernatural element at work--the crazy kid sees it, the main girl sees it, the students in the dorm are confronted by it. But instead of focusing on that, they choose to give us a "realistic" motive for the game, which just makes the whole thing seem ridiculous and stupid. It's like saying, here, have a convenient plot twist.

They needed to choose ONE direction to take the conclusion in: either have the killer be the dead ghost OR have it be the dead girl's parents seeking revenge. Not both! As it is, it just doesn't make sense.

Even if her parents were upset/angry over their daughter's death, the way they attempted to find the culprit was just exaggerated and stupid. In a truly realistic ending, the parents would have taken the cell-phone to the police and had THEM track down the killer, then taken their revenge after finding out it was the teacher. Instead, they decide to break into the school, torment students, and create complicated puzzles that will eventually reveal that their daughter was murdered. Seriously... the ghost could have done that herself. And it would have been MORE believable!

Maybe I missed something, but how did they find out why their daughter was killed in the first place? They must have had her cell-phone, but even then, it's not like she would have told them what happened at school... if she had, they would have gone to the school with her and confronted the principal. And why would the killer actually return her cell-phone to her parents anyway? Wouldn't he have checked it first and deleted such an incriminating video? And how did kidnapping/killing their daughter's friends avenge their daughter and help them track down the killer?!

If you're going to choose a motive that's realistic, then believable explanations should be required... and they didn't have any.

They even went so far as to portray the girl's mother as a ghost. Yet from what I understood, the girl's mother wasn't dead... they just had her acting like she was. They had HER carrying on the typical "ghost" character: glassy eyes, white dress, strange unnatural movements, crawling around in the ceiling. And yet they show her wielding a knife, and actually getting killed by the teacher.

And then their daughter is the "other" ghost that is haunting the crazy kid and the main character, only to conclude with THE MOST cliché ending of all: the dead girl has possessed her best friend.

Gee, never seen that before!

Besides, I'm still mad that the stupid game was rigged... they all die regardless of whether or not they solve the puzzles in time. So what was the point?

This is how the movie should have gone: it opens with a beautiful spring day, we're shown the auditorium. Slowly the camera pans in on the dead girl and we hear a scream as her body's discovered. The movie starts off the same--the creepy dream (minus annoying camera shaking) and the special classroom of brilliant students. Then the game begins. The killer is the ghost--forget about her stupid parents. She was murdered, everyone thinks it was suicide, the school's still corrupt, and she's pissed. She locks everyone in the classroom and forces them to answer her exam questions... each is somehow related to her death... and each time a question is over, she takes another student from the room, right in front of everyone, and they can't stop her. Because she's a ghost. However, she skips over her best friend who were innocent in her death (though the shy, innocent one was actually guilty of something that's revealed in an exam question, and she--possibly--dies). The final student and the final question reveals the killer--she possesses her best friend and kills the teacher. Everyone's happy. Except the people who are dead, and the one who survived and now need psychiatric help.

In my version, realism wouldn't have even been a factor. And most importantly, we could have been spared the horribly cliché, pathetic, overused ending(s).

END OF SPOILERS

Still, I can't say it's exactly a bad movie. The acting is top-notch, and the directing is pretty good (though the constant shaking during the dream sequence at the beginning was really annoying). And at least you can tell they tried to make an interesting script. I just wish they had kept it more supernatural, and not tired so hard to explain the reasons behind the quiz/puzzles.

Oh well, at least I finally got to see Kim Beom in something. Ever since I heard he's going to be in the Korean Drama version of Hana Yori Dango, I've been curious to see how he acts. And in this movie, he was one of my favorite characters.

Overall, it's not a bad movie to watch if you feel like watching a horror movie. Just don't expect it to be any different from the hundreds of other Korean horror movies out there. Watch it only for entertainment, not to find the next breakthrough in Korean horror.

My Rating: