Three Lines of Epitaph Write on DVD

The movie “Epitaph” has released last august in Korea and goes to release in another Asian country on October with subtitled “The Last Breath”. Now this K-horror is on the way to being one member of your home cinema collections with its release on DVD format which expected this November 29. The plot and storyline of “Epitaph” will goes a little different with other K-horror which you’ve ever seen before, co-directed by two breakthrough directors the Jung Brothers, which divided their movie into three different stories that have a connection on each other. With this movie, Jung Brothers or Jung Sik and Jung Bum-sik were honored with the New Director award at the Pusan Film Critic Awards and also received their first international recognition when “Epitaph” screened in the 2007 San Sebastian International Film Festival. This is a horror movie with finesse cinematography, intriguing plot, great acting and amazing set where it approximately is in the hospital (another Korean horror set in the hospital after "The Cut") on the year of 1940’s when Seoul was in the long occupation of Japanese.

The story opens in 1979, when Dr. Park receives an old photo album from his 20’s in 1941, the scene which begin the mysterious journey through these three stories one by one, set in Ahn Seng Hospital in Kyung Sung, the capital of 1940’s Japan occupied Korea. A hospital that representing both side of the Japanese imperialism glories and the western modernization. A hospital that stood strongly in the center of the city, and the one that will become the witness of all the weird and horrifying events which will happens inside it. The first hospital tale will revolve around the life of Jung-Name, who was bound by his parents to marry a girl whom he never met which probably is the daughter of the hospital director. When he takes his first night duty at the morgue, he’s facing with breathtaking beauty of a teenager girl corpse who was committed suicide. Her beauty and sadly story behind the tragedy throw Jung-Name in a love feeling with her dead body, this all that will take Jung-Name to revealing his own dazzling destiny. The second tale is about a young girl named Asako, she was the only survivor in one deadly car accident that oddly enough doesn’t causing any physical damage on her but left her whole family died. A psychiatrist named Soo-In tried to cure her suffering from seeing the dead every night after the tragic event. That when he learns about the young girl fatal jealousy against her own mother over the stepfather. The last hospital tale will take on the journey of two married couple doctors that will go across the two previous odd stories. Dong Won and In Young whose return to the hospital from their studies in Tokyo, but they were soon falling into a world of confusion and fear when they discover something evil is waiting beneath the hospital. One night, Dong Won following his wife who gets out of bed at midnight and witnesses her doing something very horribly which also will brings on their agony from the past.Epitaph Limited Korean Version DVD will come with the following extra features:

* Audio Commentary by the Director and Main Actors
* Deleted Scenes
* Director's Interview
* Actors' Interview
* Art Director's Interview
* Production Process
* Making Of Screenplay
* FAKE Documentary
* Production Announcement
* Art Set
* Theatrical Trailer and TV AdvertisementProduct Details:
Product Title: Epitaph (DVD) (DTS) (Limited Edition) (Korea Version)
Actors: KIM Tae-woo, KIM Bo-kyung, JIN Goo, LEE Dong-kyu.
Directors: Jung Sik and Jung Bum-sik
Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 (Anamorphic), Color, NTSC
Language: Korean
Subtitle: Korean, English
Audio Specs: Digital Surround 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0
Region: Region 3 South East Asia (including Hong Kong, S. Korea and Taiwan)
Number of discs: 2
Country Made: South Korea
Genre: Horror
Distributor: S.M. Pictures
Release Date: November 29, 2007 (Order your copy now!)

Another Movie Review (Warning! Spoiler ahead):

To brand Epitaph under the horror genre is not exactly right. It's more in line with the romance genre with a unhealthy focus on the undying type of love. Since Epitaph is segmented into 3 such stories and let’s review each of them individually. The first segment comprises of the start and the end of the whole movie. It begins with the hospital director, Jung-Name recounting events that occurred back in 1941 when he was just an intern at the morgue. He was betrothed to the director's daughter but was strangely attracted to a corpse of a beautiful teenager girl who committed suicide. In a movie that had similar theme to the weirdness of twilight zone, this segment packs the most bizarre revelation in this movie. However, the whole process took such a long time to unravel with very few scary moments that it seems that this whole movie is anti-scariness and pro long draggyness. While it might be fine for those who purchased the ticket for a drama genre type of movie, those who came to be spook might just nod off at the beautifully but overwhelming slow and tiresome shot scenes. After the first story come to a pause, the pace of the movie took a sharp turn. If the first tale was low on scares, the second one went overdrive to spook the viewers. In the second tale, we are treated to the little girl, Asako's horrific experience of staying in a hospital after a terrible accident that took away her parents' lives. While the haunting seems scary and bizarre, if one understand motivation among characters and family love in cinematic sense, it's not that difficult to get underneath the fright mechanization to see what's driving the scary nightmares in the hospital. It could easily be the scariest tale of trio but the biggest draw in this segment is the presentation of the strong parental love between mother and a daughter. What detracts this segment was the unnecessary additional twist of fate for the little girl’s psychiatrist, Soo-In. The essence of the second tale was already effectively translated from the screen to the audience and it wasn’t necessary to drag the audience through another round of gruesome mayhem. This form continues to the final story in Epitaph which denoted the misadventure of the married couple doctors, Dong-Won and In-Young. The young married couple had just return from their Avant-Garde brain operation from Japan and when they return back to Korea, a series of killings targeted the Japanese soldiers occupying in Korea. Compare to the second segment, the third segment overdose with twisted revelation on top of another. It felt that the storyteller was desperately trying to elevate this average tale to something more memorable but it backfires instead. This segment utilized one of the most interesting cinematography way of capturing shadow but it’s also has one of the most glaring use of computer generated effect which made some of the shadow effect look fake and cheap. The last problem it had was how it tried to link this three different horror tales together in a jigsaw puzzle manner. While some films was able to do it effectively like Crazy Stone where it successfully show how one person’s seemly innocent action would affect another persona greatly, Epitaph simply lack the fineness to do so. It will make the non passive viewers to try to figure out what's the point of linking these segments together and the result would be a disappointing zero. Personally, this film was actually good enough on it’s own without the disguise as a horror genre and trying too hard in its multiple endings or linkage. It’s a pity as it had potential in its set production, characters, story and cast.

Review by Richard Lim Jr. From Moviexclusive

FIND OUT MORE...

Win Naraka 19 Game To Get The DVD

Naraka 19 is a movie that based on a popular internet novel created by Choi Tsun, it’s enormously popular among young readers, a dark tale about a curse mobile phone game called Naraka 19 or the 19th gate of hell. The novel itself has broken sales records with over 2.000.000 copies sold in China alone over the last two years, and the book has now been translated into many languages and is being distributed worldwide. This big screen adaptation is released last September in Asia, but in a very short time now the movie already being bundles on home cinema version or DVD to collect. The product is expected to release on October 26, 2007. (Order your copy now!)

The story begin when a girl named Rain (Gillian Chung), checks into her college dorm room along with pals, Mandy (Bonnie Xin), Violet (Vincy) and Eva (Maggie Li). What they didn’t know about the place is the history of the room 10 years prior, a student named Gao Yuan was committed suicide in there, and the resulting psychic scars run deep. The nightmare starting when Rain notices that Eva is always sending text message late at night, she seems to be addicted to her cell phone. One day, Rain receives a text message from her and the contents are “Help me” message. What they found later is Eva dead in a gruesome manner. However, Eva’s phone keeps receiving the mysterious messages and Rain discovers that one of them says “Game Over”. The mystery between the message and Eva’s dead draws Rain to get another mysterious text message that inviting her to play this special game called “Naraka 19”, Rain start to realize what the nightmare really is as soon as she and her other friends decided to enter the game. The game made them travel to each level of hell in order to reach the fabled 19th gate of hell, it’s a dark and fantastic world that surrounded by demons and otherworldly creatures. They must face every obstacle before making it to the exit, and thus solving the level and earning them passage to the next level. What if they don’t pass the level, the consequence is going mad which draws them to do something severe, like killing themselves. Rain tries her best to reach the final stage that will take her to something far beyond what she expected before.

The Film Reviews:
The Chinese believes that there are 18th gates of hell with each gate (or level as you descend) representing a certain form of torture for each specific wrong doings that an individual is guilty of. If you are a sex offender, you will be sent to the 5th level to be fried in oil. Or if you stirred up trouble by gossiping, be prepared to be sent to the 9th level to have your tongues ripped out. Naraka 19 is trying to offers an extra gate / level to the pre existing 18 gates that commonly known to most Chinese and what could be worse than the never ending inferno without any chance in reincarnation? Confusingly, Naraka 19 posses the question but forgotten to answer it or even shred some lights into it. Basically, Naraka 19 has it’s victims (or unwilling players) going through a series of level in a mobile phone game. Once the player reaches it’s final stage, the player would be granted one wish. The concept of using mobile phone to explore hell was a rather intriguing idea and the psychological combat that the players had to go through has it’s potential but instead of focusing on this two elements, the film chose to branch out to many characters and subplots which was confusing and alienating. The other notable part of Naraka 19 was it’s special effects which had it’s hits and misses. The impressive bit of the special effects was how it was used to paint the picturesque version of hell. It manages to capture the essence of evil that one would fear while visiting the underworld and in the safety zone of the theatre seats, it’s easy to gasp at the wondrously illustrated version of hell. But the disappointing bit was that there were far too few displays this hellish levels. The unimpressive bit of the special effects would it how it was used to invoke the sense of fear. Like a recent Hong Kong horror film, The Haunted School, this film also uses quick cuts or extreme zoom in/out and close up on characters in a weak attempt to create scary ambiance for this movie. It’s either they never learn from the mistake that their peer just made recently or maybe this sort of fear tactic works in their region. Beside it’s un-scariness, the way that the movie told it’s story was in the same manner that the lead character (Rain) undergoes the process of game play and it was done in a ultra fast manner with plenty of skip options. Slow revelation here are not of an importance here and with each level of hell so easily cleared (or skipped), it’s hard for the audience to emote with Rain. Sadly, the process of the Rain going through the various difficult mobile game play was what this movie had going so far and yet it was done in fashion that it seems that the filmmaker wasn’t interested to place any emphasis on the main sell point of the movie. Instead, they chose to laden this movie with other character’s subplots that weren’t necessary to build the Rain’s supposedly tedious journey to the final stage and if it doesn’t help to build, it only served to distract and prolong the film in an unnecessary manner. With it’s synopsis stating that Naraka 19 in it’s novel form has quite a major following among the youngster, I found it amusing to see a youngster beside me, fidgeting restlessly during the movie. Perhaps Gillian Chung is not his (and my) cup of tea or perhaps this movie really messes up the potential it has but in the end, this movie only succeeded in intriguing me to find out more about the more commonly known 18th level of hell instead of 19th one in Naraka 19. (Reviewed by Richard Lim Jr which taken from www.moviexclusive.com)

Product Details:

Product Title: Naraka 19 (DVD) (Hong Kong Version)
Actors: Gillian Chung Yan-Tung, Shaun Tam Chun-Yin, Patrick Tam Yiu-Man, Bonnie Sin Sik-Lai (Bonnie Xin), Charlene Choi.
Directors: Carol Lai Miu Suet
Format: Widescreen 2.35:1 (Anamorphic), Color, NTSC
Language: Cantonese, Mandarin
Subtitle: English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese
Audio Specs: Digital Surround 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0
Region: Region 3 South East Asia (including Hong Kong, S. Korea and Taiwan)
Number of discs: 1
Country Made: China (Hong Kong)
Genre: Thriller
Distributor: Mei Ah Entertainment
Release Date: October 26, 2007 (Order your copy now!)

FIND OUT MORE...