[HanCinema's Film Review] "Nightmare"

So "Phone" wasn't the only horror movie joint in Ha Ji-won's early career. The famed actress actually got her start in "Nightmare" where she plays Kyeong-ah, a quiet college girl from the countryside turned vengeful ghost. The movie is also notable for having an aggressively misleading title, both in the original English and Korean. Dubbed "The Horror Game Movie Nightmare" it nevertheless had nothing to do with horror games or scissors, in Korean. Honestly, "Nightmare" is pretty generic, but not bad.

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Much of this stems from how the story actually takes place from the perspective of Hye-jin (played by Kim Gyoo-ri). She's the most normal member of the social group that had some sort of ambiguous relationship with Kyeong-ah. Which is to say, Hye-jin appears to show the most sincere remorse. So when "Nightmare" finally gets around to showing us some grisly deaths involving these old university chums, it's an open question whether Kyeong-ah's ghost is actually responsible or if this is just Hye-jin's overactive imagination at work.

Other more reliable perspective scenes are ones involving various attempts at extortion by the so-called friends against each other. Frankly I would have liked a lot more exploration of the larger group's extremely toxic and backstabbing dynamics. Even when they were still all allegedly friends in college, our various lead characters didn't seem to like each other all that much. Some very superficial talent in regards to baseball, legal studies, and videography can't really hide the obvious lack of empathy, or a genuine moral compass.

As a result much of the exposition is tedious. But "Nightmare" picks up a lot at the halfway point, when the plot elements I list above are explicitly, textually emphasized to the point that I could finally figure out where writer/director Ahn Byeong-ki was going with the premise. Even the original English isn't that bad when you realize that "horror", "game" "movie", and "Nightmare" are all separate ideas.

The scissors uh, I think that refers to the weird opening scene where the coroner was messing with eyeballs? That's later briefly mentioned by some police detective? Much as was the case with "Phone" the editing is sloppy enough that it's not always easy to tell what's going on. Ironically, by having a more generic premise than "Phone" it's often much easier to figure out what's going on in "Nightmare" because the movie follows conventions pretty reliably.

Looking back it's easy to see why Ahn Byeong-ki retired from making his own horror movies to just producing them. His work really doesn't hold up that well, even if there's a sort of cheesy charm that's pretty emblematic of a lot of Korean New Wave films. "Nightmare" is an easy movie to like despite its flaws due to its sincerity. And you can also see flashes of tragic resignation in Ha Ji-won's performance that were much more effectively utilized in her later melodramatic career.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Nightmare" is directed by Ahn Byeong-ki, and features Kim Gyoo-ri, Choi Jung-yoon, Ha Ji-won, Yu Jun-sang, Yoo Ji-tae, Jung Joon. Release date in Korea: 2000/07/29.

 

Available on DVD from Amazon