After Dark Horror Fest 3: Voices

I was pleased when the credits started rolling and this turned out to be a Korean film. ADHF #2 didn't have any foreign films, and were it me, I'd be trying to push the foreign stuff, since you have the chance of a high quality film that can't get access just because it's subtitled. Also, my favorite film of ADHF #1 was the Takashi Shimizu (of The Grudge--trust me, he's better in Japanese) film Rinne.

This film is actually similar in some ways to The Grudge, in the sense that there's a curse causing people to act out their jealousies by killing their rivals. Call it The Blame.

The problem with all of these abstract-concept-comes-to-life films--and other killer ghost story movies like The Ring or One Missed Call--is that without defining some clear parameter for your boogen to operate in, you give the game away that you're just making it up as you go and ending the movie in the 6th reel.

Really, it's vital for a horror movie to have rules. (Or any fantasy film.) Without it, you're not performing the "trick" of art that your audience wants.

For example, The Ring is powered by the idea that the ghost can be stopped by doing something for it. That gives the characters a task to undertake that can help them avoid their fate. Then, when the truth is revealed, this gives them another, different task. This is good.

Another good example can be found in The Sixth Sense, even though the characters and the audience are not ever made explicitly aware of the rules. In fact, it can be fun to go back and look at all the clues (the colors, the effects, etc.) that indicate when ghosts are around.

Without rules, the audience feels cheated, which is unfortuantely what happens here. I'm not going to rag on this movie much because it wasn't boring, which is the absolute worst crime for a horror film (or perhaps any film, although being unfunny may be even worse).

Basically, anyone can turn on you at any time. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Worst of all, one of the characters admonishes that you can't even trust yourself. Well, that's like the deus ex machina of any horror story, since you can always end it by having the character do soemthing unintended by fooling with their perception. That can done well, but it's very tricky. (See Fight Club for a good example--but once again there are rules.)

The end tries to make us believe that, somehow, the events of the film are set into action by the characters, as if they had control over it all along, but that just feels like a big cheat. There's no reason for it and no control.

So it wasn't the worst we saw, but it was disappointing. It should have worked: The whole concept of your family and friends having the urge to kill you--which you know they all do, or is that just me?--could've made a tight, paranoid film like Bug.

Instead, the film is unfocused, having the lead meander about as person after person harms or kills themselves trying to kill her.

Then the movie tags on an epilogue which would've perhaps helped the film hang together had it been filmed with the lead and stuck at the beginning of the movie, but just ends up feeling like a cheat.

Kind of a disappointing ending to the whole festival, which itself was kind of disappointing.