Horror On-Demand

When I was in Seoul for work back in January I stopped at the first DVD stand I could find and picked out every recent release disc they had that looked even vaguely like a horror movie. No clue on the titles, no clue on the plots, but if it had a blood splatter on the cover (the international sign for horror movie), it came home with me. One of the titles in the stack happened to be Death Bell, a crazy little film about students who spend the weekend at their vacant school in order to cram for an upcoming intellectual decathlon against a rival school. Except all of the kids soon find it hard to study when someone starts kidnapping them and setting them inside Saw-esque traps that can only be escaped if the remaining students solve a brain teaser in time.

As with most Asian films, though, the "That sounds cool, why can't I find it anywhere?" barrier in the past has always been a lack of distribution in the US, but now thanks to IFC On-Demand, a good chunk of us Yanks will be able to plop down on a couch and give the student-killing film a shot on October 14th as part of IFC's Festival Direct program. Which is great news, because Death Bell is just insane enough (and, distinctly non-American enough) to warrant a watch for fans of Asian horror movies, even despite a few zany script problems.

Check out the trailer below.