Tale of Two Sisters (장화, 홍련) (2003)

Synopsis: Su Mi and her sister Su Yeon return home from an insitution only to find their hated step mother there. The tension starts building immediately. To add problems to the equation, the house is haunted due to a tragic past. Su Mi's mind begins to deteriorate when she suspects her step mother of beating her sister Su Yeon. What's even more frustrating is Su Mi's father's failure to act during this crisis, forcing Su Mi to take matters into her own hands resulting in a bloody confrontation where the winners are the losers and the losers don't exist.

Should You Watch It? This movie is straight up Asian horror. Now you see horror and think immediately a lot of a gore. Well, there are none. Well maybe there are a lot of scares. Hmmm, not really. So what does this movie have? This movie has a lot of weird and trippy scenes which plays around with your mind by reaching into your brain and swirling it around. By the end of this movie your nerves will be completely shot, but this horror movie, unlike many others, has a very satisfying story which will make going through hell worth the trip.

Things to Watch Out For: If you think I'm going to warn you about the scare scenes then no way! This movie is Korean if you haven't figured it out yet, so there will be subtitles, but that shouldn't be a big deal. A big reason why this movie is so brilliant is because of the cinematography and the direction. Every shot is a work of art. The setting is so simple yet so lush. This combined with clever uses of flash cuts and dissolve cuts really gives the audience a good sense of time which is important for the audience to get this movie.

Things You Don't Expect: You know how in American Horror films, the music kinda warns you what's going to happen. You know, that really eerie music that fries your nerves. Do you know what's scarier than that? Having no music. That's right. The choice of doing certain scare scenes completely in silence is genius! You have no idea what's going to happen and I truely understand what it means when people say "silence is deafening."

Final Comments:
Story: 8.0
Direction: 9.6 (Ji-Woon Kim) (김지운)
Acting: 8.9
Cinematography: 9.8
Music/Sound: 9.5

Final Score: 9.3