Matrixiole
Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Murphy Howard
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
bcheng93
i have to say, the koreans know how to make a good movie. i think that for every 10 i watch maybe only 2 are bad and the rest are all very good. this particular movie was no exception. it was a very well made movie with a very good cast. the girl that plays the missing little sister is probably one of the hottest acting commodities in Korea right now. she is a great actress already at such a young age. there's at least 2 other movies that she was the main lead that i can recall and both were even better than this( sunny and hansel&gretel ). she could have won awards for either one of those movies.hmmm..., what genre to put this movie in? it has got elements of religious fanaticism, supernatural elements, eastern Asian mysticism, a decent detective and mystery story...oh well, who cares...it is just a good movie that is all. the movie was paced fairly well and the story was not too convoluted. it wasn't too scary or creepy to me like some reviewers have said, although i think it will scare some people.i personally enjoy these types of movies with east-Asian mysticism, Christian fanatics and supernatural elements and it was a fairly entertaining movie and i always wanted to find out what was going to happen next.
alcoolj
Actually I have problems with adding at least 10 new and meaningful lines to this movie. All important stuff to understand the movie was already written by other reviews: most importantly the role of the crane. So I can't give you a lot of new input, except maybe one thing: *slight spoiler* When Hee-Jin has her vision at the playground, she finds a lost tooth. In Korea the dream of loosing a tooth is said to have the unlucky meaning, that a relative will die. About the actors/actresses. I really love the performance of leading actress Nam Sang-mi who is a very convincing older sister and doubting disbeliever. She doesn't look too artificially perfect like many other Korean star(let)s, but is a beautiful girl anyway. I felt the shaman and the mother overacted , thats why I subtracted 1 point.Like in many movies from Korea the police is depicted somehow stupid. I really worry, there might be a grain of truth... If you don't need the nail-biting thrill of surprise-horror, I really hope you have the chance to watch the movie. You can at least find an interesting story, some details about (superstitious or not) Korea and something to discuss about.Please excuse my not perfect English.
dbborroughs
I saw this film at the Tribeca film festival and it really knocked my socks off. Its a slowly building film that messes with your head, isn't gory and manages to through in notions of religious faith. It made me and the audience I saw it with jump several times (even when we saw it coming). Its a masterpiece of its kind. And the best of the 8 films I've seen so far at the Tribeca Film Festival.The plot has a college girl go home because something has happened to her sister. When she gets home she finds her sister missing and her mother possessed by an even stronger Christian belief. As she pleads with the police to help find her sister people in her apartment complex begin dying, all are some how connected to her sister.I know this film isn't going to please people who need blood and guts and ooze to be scared. There are no axe wielding maniacs or typical things one associates with modern horror. Instead we have a film that shows a world askew and builds menace from that. Sure there are shocks and death, but at the same time they are subtly done, look away and you'll miss an eye that moves exactly the way eyes can't, or a mouth that's a little too wide.I love that this film has ideas in its head beyond just being scary. This is a film that is very much rooted in the worlds of Christianity, atheism and shamanism. It's a film that relies on the struggles of the three points of view to create a very tense atmosphere. Ultimately the film is not so much a horror film as a meditation on the nature of faith.For one of the few times since Silence of the Lambs I saw a horror movie with an audience that was wound up tight as a drum. Only one time, after a very strange passage was there any sort of "unintentional laughter" which seemed from what I could hear to come from unease at what some people were experiencing. I don't know when was the last time that I jumped as many times as I did here. to be certain I could see the jumps coming but I still leapt out of my seat.If there are any flaws its that toward the end there a couple of small moments where things happen that aren't explained, why is the time of death questioned? (I'm guessing an autopsy report but its not spelled out). The very end of the film also doesn't have an ending that is completely satisfying, the tension isn't released but rather dissipates (on the other hand if you see the film as not just a horror film it makes more sense.) Still this film knocked my socks off. I stared at the screen wanting to know what was coming and dreading the possibilities.This is a must see film for those who don't need the blood and the body parts.
sitenoise
I kept thinking of MOTHER by Bong Joon-ho as I watched this movie. Not because the stories are the same, although one could conjure up a few loose similarities, but because of the mature tone of the direction, how masterfully well executed it is. I feel vindicated in my feeling as I have since discovered that the first time director of this film, Lee Yong-Ju, started working in the industry as assistant director for Bong, on the 2003 masterpiece MEMORIES OF MURDER. Certainly some of Bong's genius and attention to detail rubbed off on Lee.POSSESSED is more thriller than horror. It's got some scares and a few jolts here and there, but it's really more eerie than frightening. The story concerns a girl who returns home from college when she learns her younger sister has gone missing. She discovers her mother has become a religious fanatic who believes only prayer will bring her sister back. But back from where becomes the big question. People all around her commit suicide. There's a cult, a Shaman, and a handful of freaky people who engage in weird ceremonies with a hope for salvation or cure from disease. It's not a pedantic essay on religious belief but that is the main theme of the film and it serves to give the proceedings some depth. It also situates the film on a terrain of the supernatural which, when you make a film, gives you license to bend realities and play visual tricks from time to time. But nothing is cheap here. The intended audience isn't the summer of fear kids. It's more serious than that and it never gets close to outrageous.The film has gone through an almost endless number of titles. It started off as Scream but as the religious elements became more important and obvious it ended up with the international English title, POSSESSED. My favorite was DISBELIEF HELL, which is the closest literal translation of the Korean Bool-sin-ji-OK ... 불신지옥 (不信地獄), "hell of the non-believers."POSSESSED is very well cast. I have the feeling that director Lee was intent on reigning in the two young girls from any tendency to play cute or mug scary for the camera. Again, nothing cheap here. Shim Eun-Kyung, a young Korean phenom known for her playful and cute roles on TV, plays the Possessed little girl and could have phoned in her performance but instead, in a role that doesn't offer a lot of screen time, is remarkably restrained. Nam Sang-Mi, a young starlet in her own right, plays her older sister and the film belongs to her. She's the character in the film who returns to her hometown to investigate all the weirdness going on and she moves through the film like it's all unfolding in front of her just like it is for the audience. She's beautiful to look at and there's a realism to her performance that is truly engaging. There is a scene, which demonstrates the abilities of both Nam and director Lee, where someone clobbers her over the head with a blunt instrument. After she's hit, we see her react, look back and make eye contact with her assailant as if she wasn't told she was going to get hit in the scene and really wants to say "what the hell was that? What are you ..." Clobber again! Her eyes project a real, confused fear, and the director's capturing them make for an awesome moment.Although I single out the two youngsters for praise here the rest of the cast, all veterans you'd expect good performances from, deliver at equally high levels. Everything about this film is good: the acting, the thoughtful script, the cool cinematography, the eerie score, the skilled direction. I can't recommend Possessed enough, but don't go in hoping for a return to the innocent glory days of RINGU or JU-ON. This is Asian Horror 2.0. Lee Yong-Ju has taken it to another level. It's more mature in his accomplished hands and if you like Asian horror, or, better yet, if you've become bored with Asian horror, see this movie. It will renew your faith.
