KoreanHorror

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.

Must Love Death, Directed by Andreas Schaap, 2009
Sometimes a movie is so out there it evades description, but I'll give it a shot: Must Love Death is a German made, English language horror comedy about a down on his luck singer who, after experiencing back-to-back heartbreaks, agrees to a suicide pact with three strangers that turns out to be less a pact and more a round robin game of 'let's torture this poor schmuck'.

Despite a second half that will make you squirm between giggles, I'm hesitant to even call Andreas Schaap's film a horror movie. If anything, it's a jet black romantic comedy, but as the title implies it's also a movie only for people who love the morbid side of life. I didn't fall head over heels, but there is no denying how unique of genre bender it is. It's certainly a film to keep on your radar as it begins to globe trot to various festivals.

Nature's Grave (AKA Long Weekend), Directed by Jamie Blanks, 2009
I haven't seen Long Weekend, Colin Eggleston's original 1974 Ozploitation film about a couple who venture into the wild for a few days only to discover that Mother Nature's creatures great and small don't take kindly to their intrusion, so I can't speak as to how different Jamie Blanks' update on the film is. However, I imagine it can't be too different considering the screenwriter Everett De Roche can be found over at IMDb stating, "I wrote both the original and the remake, and yes, Director Jamie Blanks insisted on a verbatum version, although I was able to insert a few more spooky bits."