Being smart gets you killed.
Slowly.
I don’t say this just because I’m not the brightest bulb in the happy meal either. Everyone may make fun of the half naked chick who runs through the forest, screams, trips, falls, and then dies, but you’ve never seen her tortured now have you? In Final Destination it wasn’t the dumb people who stayed on the plane or who decided to ride the coaster anyway who died in drawn out, bloody ways. No, it was the smart asses who escaped and tried to come up with inventive solutions to get out of what was going on which only seemed to tick off death in the end. Hence the inventive little murders like death by fishhooks and elevator doors, and suffocating on a plastic fish in the dentist’s office while you’re doped up on Novocain.
The point is, be smart by not being smart.
Lay down and die and you won’t have another hour and a half of screaming, blood and gore torture to go through. Personally I think it’s a win, win situation. Mike Meyers meets his quota for the week and as a result you’ve helped out your fellow man.
Or serial killer.
Death Bell is a perfect example of what I mean. Not to say that they follow my advice and lie down and die, oh no. They do me one better.
For the first half of the film, they let everyone else die instead. Death Bell is like the ultimate version of a reverse Saw, if you don’t get the puzzles right, it’s not you who suffers for the failure, but your friends and classmates.
It is, in a purely horror filmy way, Epic.
The spicy heroine of the film Kang Yi-na, played by Nam Gyu-ri, has just been chosen as one of the top twenty students in her school, along with Kim Bum as Kang Hyeon, Yi-Na’s love interest, and her best friend Yoon Myong-hyo, played by Han Na-yeon. This special class, filled to the brim with the elite, is held over the break to get the students ready for their college entrance exams. At first it simply seems like another boring study session, but about halfway through things begin to go horribly wrong.
Beethoven’s Fur Elise heralds the chilling image of Hye-yeong, the class’s top student, trapped inside a giant fish tank on the class’s television screen. On the glass, framing the terrified girl as she scrambles and tries to beat her way out of her makeshift coffin, is a riddle. A disembodied voice over the intercom informs the shocked students along with the three remaining teachers in the school, that the riddle needed an answer before the girl died.
Then the tank, once empty, begins to slowly fill with water.
The first victim in the movie never had a chance. Terrified and disbelieving, by the time the students finish arguing with each other as well as the head teacher Hwang Chan-wook, English teacher Choi So-yeong, as well as Lee Chi-yeong who seems to hate Kang Hyeon and blames him for what’s going on at every opportunity, it is only to look up and find Hye-yeong floating, lifeless, inside of the tank.
The bell plays once again and the voice warns that should anyone try and leave the school then they would be killed. Their cell phones have disappeared along with the student in charge of collecting them. The school’s security and phone lines have been cut. The grounds are being watched and those who leave are taken out by an invisible enemy. And everywhere they look, one of their numbers is taken only to be replaced by yet another riddle that could mean their life or death. Students are being murdered in order of their ranking and Yi-na is fifth on the list.
The difficulty of the questions increase as night falls, and with each answer and each death, the shocking truth about the schools most securely kept secret begins to make itself known.
As the only Korean film released in 2008, Death Bell premiered at the 12th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival. Though rushed in order to be ready for the festival in time, Death Bell turned out to be one of the top five most popular horror film in Korea. Not nearly as shattering as A Tale of Two Sisters, but still satisfying enough to keep horror lovers fat and happy. So while some critiques may dub it ‘torture porn’ they obviously can’t appreciate a good thing when they see it. I’ll admit that the buildup is more exciting than its subsequent ending, but all in all the film was tied nicely together. I would have loved to see what former music video director Yoon Hong-seun could have done with his first horror film had he had more time.
The film marks the acting debut of Korean pop star Nam Gyu-ri, as well as comic aficionado Lee Beom-soo’s first ever role in the world of the dark and bloody. Both do a good enough job that it won’t be surprising if we see them again this genre. Gyu-ri and Kim Bum have amazing chemistry together and add in the dedication between Gyu-ri and Han Na-yeon, and the three of them make a devastating triad. One where the loss of any of them turns the senselessness of their deaths into something more than ‘torture porn’ and converts it into something entirely more poignant.
Death Bell or Gosa, was written Yoon Hong-Seung and Kim Eun-Kyeong and directed by Yoon Hong-Seung
