Death Bell

Starring: Lee Beom- Soo, Nam Gyu-Ri

Synopsis:

A group of outstanding students at a prestigious foreign languages academy are completing their final examinations prior to graduation when a series of bizarre events begins to interrupt the order and balance of the school. School bells begin to go off at the wrong time.

And students begin to see things. Strange things which may or may not be there.

Resentment between the exceptional students, who also happen to almost all be from privileged backgrounds, and students with less well off families threatens to boil over.

Then, suddenly, the schools phone and internet are cut off, anyone trying to leave gets murdered by persons unknown, pupils are being abducted one by one and tortured in increasingly grisly ways.

The staff and students are given a series of puzzles and problems to solve in exchange for the lives of the missing, while simultaneously trying to work out who the abductor(s) might be what, if any, motives they may have.

Review:

Visually slick from the very beginning and with a swiftly paced contemporary style which nods in the direction of “Chang’s” roots in Music Video, Death Bell gets to work quickly.

Which is just as well as it is, like most Korean movies I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing, trying to do quite a lot in the time allotted.

Introductions to the main characters and explanations of the pressures on them are thorough and worthwhile.

The relationships between the students in the Special Class, especially that between best friends Kang Yi Na and Yoon Myong-Hyo are well examined and very well acted. On close analysis the female pupils seem to be much more the focus of this story than the males.

The teaching staff also are solid. Mr Kim “Lee Beom Soo”, who leads the Special class comes in somewhere between Matthew Broderick and Robin Williams, a thorough caring and sympathetic man. His friend Mr Lee, on the other hand couldn’t care less about almost everything, he just wants to get through the day. The extremely straight laced and disciplinarian Ms Choi, played by Yoon Jung Hee provides the third point of this triangle.

It’s enjoyable to watch a horror/ thriller where the characters are more than just two dimensional cyphers waiting for the axe to fall, and this film doesn’t disappoint. Depth of characterization just makes the shocks and “behind you” moments that bit richer. There is a fair bit of gruesome violence in this film. Fans of survival horror, slasher, thriller and even supernatural movies won’t be let down.

Admittedly seeing that written down it sounds like a lot going on at once, but it is rarely confusing except moments where confusion is intentional. There are a also few clues scattered around to point the sharper viewer in the direction of the final twist, but you will have to pay attention to get them. The puzzles themselves are hit and miss though. It’s probably my only gripe, and it’s a small one. Some of the puzzles could do with a bit more explanation, they seem a bit contrived, and solved too conveniently.

“Chang” tells the story well, and although his directing style does seem closer to a Western perspective, the narrative structure and story arc are very Korean, specifically how the end of the story is told, and what constitutes “closure” for Korean cinema always seems a lot more thorough than similar horror genre films from the West.

A thought on the story itself, It’s likely that you may find your sense of disbelief pushed to the limit in the final tidy up. The killers underlying motivation is a fairly well used one, but the circumstances which led there are interesting, and the ending certainly prompted me to rethink what I was actually going on during the film in the light of more complete info.

Verdict:

It’s an interesting film worth the time if one enjoys the horror/ slasher sort of thing. Not groundbreaking, but pleasing to watch, and with on the whole a very good cast.

8 out of 10 (Sulaco)

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