Thursday 20 September 2007

Memento Mori (1999) Tae-Yong Kim & Kyu-Dong Min

Asian horror films set in all girl schools are about as good as it gets in my book, so this one from Korea looked promising from the outset. It's a sequel, to a film called Whispering Corridors, made by director Ki-hyeong Park and which I haven't seen, so can't really say how well it follows it. We jump around a lot, that's for certain, and we follow quite a few characters, so it's not always easy to follow what's going on.

There are two girls, Shi-eun and Hyo-shin, who seem to be lovers and have a long standing strange connection, even though they haven't seen each other in some time. Shi-eun is almost deaf, it seems, but is telepathic, and Hyo-shin is the only one who can communicate back. Unfortunately for Shi-eun, Hyo-shin takes a suicidal dive off the top of one of the school buildings and dies, possibly pregnant by one of the teachers to boot.

There's Min-ah, who finds a mysterious diary that seems to invoke hallucinations or visions or memories, and is apparently the shared diary of Shi-eun and Hyo-shin. She starts to see the past history of the pair and their motivations, becoming involved in the saga herself. There are also a few other troublemakers who continually mess around and get into trouble, and the three main characters intertwine with these as the narrative gradually becomes clearer.

I really mean gradually. This is confusing for quite a while and only gradually do things start to gel together into one story that makes sense. There's still room for interpretation though and it's definitely one to rewatch at a later date. Interesting viewing though.

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