"Black House" and "Carved: the slit mouthed woman"
"Black House" is a korean film based on a novel. the story centers around a mild mannered insurance agent that suspects a family murdered their son to receive his insurance policy. the story begins when the main character, Jun-oh, is sent to a difficult clients house, after apparently being asked for by name. when he gets there, he is invited to sit down in the den. the father then calls his son, calling him rude for not showing his presence. when the son does not appear, the father tells the insurance agent to go and get his son, something which the agent finds extremely weird. when he enters into the boys room, he finds him hanging there. at this the father stands up and walks over to the room. what is that we see in his expression? shock or guilt? Jun-oh becomes obsessed with finding out the truth behind this family. especially when he sees meets the client's crippled and suicidal wife! will the client, Chung-bae, murder again?
no ghosts in this one. just psychopaths! the acting was pretty good throughout the film. gory. creepy, but not scary. it's creepy in the sense that there are people who are actually psychopaths. this film tries to determine if psychopaths are really 'human'. some parts of the movie seemed long. there is an animal death, but you don't see it happen, so just putting that out there. like all movies, it has a 'twist' which was very cool. things i learned from this movie: don't sell insurance!
trailer:
"Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman" or Kuchisake-Onna, is a film based on a Japanese urban legend. she's sort of like the japanese "bloody mary". that right there is what drew me to the film. here is the urban legend (taken from the wiki):
The legend is said to originate with a young woman who lived hundreds of years ago (some versions of the legend state the Heian period) and was either the wife or concubine of a samurai. She is said to have been very beautiful but also very vain, and possibly cheating on her husband. The samurai, extremely jealous and feeling cuckolded, attacked her and slit her mouth from ear to ear, screaming "Who will think you're beautiful now?"
The urban legend picks up from this point, stating that a woman roams around at night (especially during foggy evenings), with her face covered by a surgical mask, which would not be especially unusual, as people with colds often wear masks for the sake of others in Japan. When she encounters someone (primarily children or college students), she will shyly ask, "Am I beautiful?" ("Watashi kirei?"). If the person answers yes, she will take off her mask and say, "Even like this?" At this point, if the victim answers "No," she will slay them (in many versions, her weapon is a pair of scissors). If the victim tells her she is pretty a second time, she follows the victim home and slays them in their own doorway, due to the fact that "kirei", Japanese for 'pretty,' is a near homophone of "kire", the imperative form of "to cut".
During the seventies, the urban legend went that if the victim answers "You're average", they are saved. When the urban legend was revived around 2000, the answer that would save you was changed to "so-so," with the change that this answer causes the kuchisake-onna to think about what to do, and her victim can escape while she is in thought.
Yamashita and Matsuzaki are elementary school teachers who are trying to fight the urban myth of the "slit-mouthed woman" which is terrorizing the town, while dealing with actual child disappearances. the closer Yamashita gets the more she realises that kids are being abused and missing than she could ever imagine. and her own past will make an impact too! if you can't stand to see children in danger DO NOT WATCH THIS. it goes past child abuse and to the point of actual child deaths, which is something i've never really seen in a japanese horror before.
the movie moved a little slow. the graphics were lame. the acting (especially Matsuzaki!) could have been better. it was a really unique (to a westerner) story that could have been done a lot better, but i don't know how. the legend behind the movie is very scary and very real. the idea of the legend scares me more than the film. it was interesting but it's little more than the Japanese "Candy Man". things i've learned from this movie: if your mom starts coughing get the fuck out!
trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-BZ0cwe_Kk