Epitaph (film)

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Epitaph (The Last Breath)
Directed by Jung Sik
Jung Beom-sik
Starring Jin Ku
Kim Tae-woo
Kim Bo-kyeong
Release date(s) Flag of South Korea August 1, 2007
Running time 98 minutes
Language Korean
IMDb profile
Korean name
Hangul 기담
Hanja 奇談
Revised Romanization Gidam

Epitaph (기담/奇談 - Gidam) is a 2007 South Korean film directed by brothers Jung Sik and Jung Beom-sik. The movie is a horror film set in 1942, while South Korea was under the colonial rule of Japan. It is framed by scenes set in 1979.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Dr. Jung Nam finds a photo album dating back to his days as an intern at the Ansaeng Hospital. He thinks back to those days where he part of his soul died. In 1942, as a young medical intern, Jung-Nam's arranged marriage ends when his fiancee (whom he has never met) commits suicide. Later he is assigned to monitor the morgue late at night. There he falls in love with a corpse, that turns out to be his deceased fiancee. Soon other mysterious events take place in the hospital, involving a young girl haunted by ghosts and a serial killer targeting Japanese soldiers.

[edit] Critical Reception

Whilst "Epitaph" has not been widely reviewed in English-speaking press, the few critics who lent their pens to it express the almost uniform impression that the film has a certain derivative feel to it, incorporating numerous formulaic genre tactics from more famous films such as the Diassociative Identity Disorder plot-twist in "A Tale of Two Sisters"[1] and the three-episode structure from "Three Extremes" and other similar examples; Slant Magazine reviewer Nick Schager comes to the dramatic conclusion that the genre "cannibalizes itself until there's nothing left except the tattered remains of once-effective conventions and the rapidly fading memories of superior scares gone by."[2] Schager also calls attention to the convoluted plot, in his words characterised by "jumbled chronology, dull repetitions, corny otherworldly melodrama".

Nonetheless, the cinematography, directing and acting by K-Horror mainstays Kim Eung-su and Ye Soo-jeong have earned the film praise as "visually as well as intellectually impressive, with some gorgeous cinematography and wonderfully composed shots"[3] and "a significant contribution to rehabilitating K-horror's international reputation"[1].

The site has not yet accrued enough reviews for a rating at either RottenTomatoes.com or Metacritic.

[edit] Awards

The film's production designers, Min-bok Lee and Yu-jeong Kim, were nominated for a 2008 Asian Film Award for the work in "Epitaph", although the award eventually went to "The Sun Also Rises".

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b KoreanFilm.org review of Epitaph by Kyu Hyun Kim, retrieved May 1, 2007
  2. ^ Slant Magazine review of Epitaph by Nick Schager, published March 17, 2008, retrieved May 1, 2008.
  3. ^ BeyondHollywood review of Epitaph written by James Mudge, published January 6, 2008, retrieved May 1, 2008

[edit] External links