Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

A Major Disappointment

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!If you're looking for a horror movie that will really scare you, well watch this! I have seen a lot of horror movies already and this is one of the most memorable horror movies for me. I don't usually got scared easily but this movie made me to do so effortlessly. Watch it!

I have just started looking into Korean horror films and I really enjoyed this one. It even had a good twist at the end which I did not expect at all. It was very well done in my opinion. The atmosphere was enjoyable as well and the acting wasn't too bad either unlike some foreign films I have watched. I would most certainly refer it to a friend or anyone who enjoys a good horror film. I have always been a horror film fanatic and find this to be one to add to my collection if the time calls for it. The actors and actresses were all new to me so gives me a few new faces to look forward to seeing in future Korean films and hope the director don't stop making them. I will definitely suggest everyone give it a watch.

Seeing how this movie did so well in Korean box office, I thought it would be pretty good. It's not really a horror flick, but sort of works like the "Saw" movies except not the victims but the students that still hasn't been kidnapped yet has to solve the puzzles in order to save there classmate. My guess is that there wasn't many Korean horror movies released during that year, and since Asians tends to crave horror flicks it did so well. Although the premise is pretty well done, none of the characters seem to stand out much and you just don't care who lives and who dies. None of them were believable and the character decisions don't make sense sometimes, there just isn't any logic. Plus everything about this movie seems to be rushed, especially the ending, the twist also wasn't that shocking or original. But what annoyed me the most was the cliché, it's safe to be in one area but a person can take it anymore or goes off to investigate when the person they leave behind is the one that really needs help, which tends to get annoying since it gets used way too much in this. Although I ain't really looking forward to the sequel to this, I hope it's better than this although sequels tend to suck.5.3/10

For those of you who like Korean horror, and who doesn't these days, there is certainly no real shortage. And Korean horror seems to have perfected the balance between the supernatural and the psychological. And the two often go hand in hand. Death Bell is a slightly more genre take on this sort of horror. It also borrows heavily from western horror films, most notably the SAW series. I would imagine this "torture porn" is something Koreans don't get a lot of, while in the US, we're plenty used to it. So, it's hard to look at this film through the eyes of its intended audience. Even so, Death Bell is entertaining enough, but descends into territory that is both too familiar and too cliché, even by Asian horror standards.For the uninitiated, Death Bell tells the story of a group of top-notch students who have been chosen to study over their vacation in order to take a test and impress a sister school. The best students in the school are chosen, but it is to their unfortunate fate. Soon, a sadistic killer traps them in the school and starts kidnapping them one by one. Each kidnapped student is then threatened with a torturous death unless the rest of the students can solve the questions being given to them by the killer.Once the film starts going, it does very much resemble the formula of SAW. Person is taken and put in some kind of trap, other person has to solve some kind of problem to free trapped person, if not person is brutally killed. And Death Bell certainly does this end well enough. The traps aren't as creative as we have come to expect from SAW, but they are creative enough, ranging from a clothes dryer to a candle wax trap. They provide a good amount of tension and there is a pretty decent mix of Korean horror elements mixed in, most notably the presence of a supernatural force.The acting is very good, with Beom-su Lee of City of Violence fame doing a particularly good job. The directing is also quite good. First time director Yoon Hong-Seung does a good job at building tension and mystery, and it is an impressive debut that successfully melds traditional western slasher conventions with Korean horror elements. Production is of the highest quality here. However, despite these elements, it still remains a mostly passable effort.The thing that really brings this down is the script. It's cliché ridden, both for western horror and eastern. There's scary ghost girls, obvious twists, and the attempts at pulling at heart strings, even though you can't help but feel emotionally detached from these characters. It might simply be a cultural barrier, something we can't really understand in what is a truly horrible academia nightmare. Still, halfway through the film, you simply stop caring. It just isn't that interesting anymore. By the time you learn the truth, it's not surprising, nor that interesting. Part of that problem comes from an over-complication of the films story. Elements used are unnecessary. If the film had been kept to a simple, entertaining horror piece, it might have worked all the way through.I rated it the way I did because of this. Everything else was top notch, and there was even quite a bit of tension, mostly during the torture scenes. But once it starts getting complicated, then it fizzles. It could have been better, and Yoon shows great potential for a sophomore effort. I'll even say that this film was very impressive as a first. But on it's own, it's merely a one-night piece of entertainment.