(2000) ****
Holeee crap. This flick was the breakout movie of last year's contest, and I've been looking forward to it all year. For half a second I thought perhaps my expectations might have been ratcheted too high. I didn't know that thirty minutes later watching that old woman padding across the room towards me in her little kimono going "e-e-e-e-e-eh!" was going to blow my brain out of its boat.
How do they do it? How do the Eastern moviemakers keep frightening me so? The very first scary thing this movie showed me had my flesh crawling -- it was the thinness of the granddaughter's arms moving in the dark. It's making me shiver right now.
They do it because they go for a different brand of scare. It's mystery scare. Take your average Friday the 13th flick vs. Living Hell. Say you're looking right at the bad guy. When it's Jason, the fear is imminent death, the question is "how do I get out?" With the Old Lady/Granddaughter duo, the fear is..."well I don't know, but something...look at them! They're creepy!" The question is "what are they going to do?" The equivalent Western mysterious build-up would be something like, oh, the sound of Freddy's claws screeching against something, and that doesn't have nearly the same punch.
There's more to it than that, naturally, but I've wandered off enough for one review. Living Hell has a yummy helping of precisely this kind of fearmongering. It also winds the action all the way to 11 plenty of times. Lots of slamming music cues and screaming, and all for a good cause. The quiet scenes of lurking threat just serve to make the violence that much more potent.
The story centers around Yasu, a wheelchair-bound young man whose father abruptly invites the scary pair to stay at their house. But while Dad and the siblings are out working, the guests deploy an evilly crazy campaign of mental and physical torture against Yasu. I think this guy was cast for his eyes. You just never get tired of seeing them widen in terror. He screams good, too.
Highly recommended for a good scare, a good laugh, and a lot of being glad it ain't you.
4 comments:
I'm so glad you liked Living Hell! As you noted this was one of the better surprises of last year's thon and I've been itching for you to see it. Also, the wheelchair guy reminds me of Keith and the kind of situation Keith would get himself into!
Omigod, that guy TOTALLY reminded me of Keith.
JPX's review from last year:
**** I don’t even know how to describe the frenzied chaos that is Living Hell. This may end up being the best discovery of the horrorthon. I don’t want to give too much plot away because it’s much more surprising to see how this film unfolds. Basically the kid from Battle Royale is wheelchair bound and he lives with his father, brother, and sister. One day his father announces that some relatives are going to move into the house with them. One is a senile old woman and the other is her mute granddaughter. Almost immediately the Battle Royale kid senses that something is not quite right with these two, but his family ignores his concerns and just chalk it up to his usual whiney eccentricities. That’s all I will say about the plot. The rest of the film unspools in such surprising and sadistic ways that you’ll be on the edge of your seat wondering how it’s all going to end. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a freaky ghost story, it’s more of a disturbing splatter film. The film is obviously low budget, but that shouldn’t get in the way of your enjoyment at all. I cringed throughout the film. It has a great pace that will leave you riveted to the very last frame. What The Ring did for little girls, Living Hell does for the elderly. A topnotch shock fest that will be watched for years to come. Also what’s cool is there are 4 short films on the DVD that end up being 70 minutes long altogether (I didn’t watch them because I knew they wouldn’t count). Here’s a quote from one review, “Filled with moments of sheer terror, Living Hell joins ranks alongside Ringu (The Ring) and Ju-On (The Grudge) as a masterpiece of modern Asian horror.”
Here's Summerisles:
**** Whew! Living Hell kicked my ass all over the place. The old lady is so unbelievably eerie that they could've made a 2 hour film out of her playing Scrabble and it would be enough to keep you awake at night. As it is they got considerable mileage out of her. The poor wheelchair bound boy is tortured mentally and physically throughout most of the film. It grew to be very frustrating at times because nobody believes him when he expresses his fear and dread. At the very least, the family should have grasped that the old lady and mute girl upset him very much and for that reason alone kicked them out. His sister was particularly annoying as she kept dismissing him by saying "Don't be foolish! She's just a sweet old lady!" Some people just have to learn the hard way...
The biggest problem with Living Hell is that the plot twists one too many times. But that should not deter anyone from watching it as it is a modern horror masterpiece with moments of sheer terror to rival Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which it borrows heavily from). The old lady's history is slowly revealed as the horror inside the house develops.
22 movies into the Horrorthon and this was the first and only movie to give me goosebumps.
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