Bloody Reunion
July. 25,2006Mi-ja, who has been taking care of a retired teacher, Ms. Park, invites several of her former students to her house 16 years after their graduation. Since the end of her teaching career, Park has been residing in the countryside, suffering from an illness while an ex-student, the kind and pretty Mi-ja cares for her.
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Reviews
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
hyped garbage
Don't listen to the negative reviews
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
'Bloody Reunion' turned out to be much better than I thought it'd be. There were quite a few original elements in play here, but if Hollywood has their way (which, of course, they always do) they'll remake this as some stupid suburban high school thriller with hipsters pretending their failed lives are due to one teacher's negligence.There used to be a principal in my elementary school named Mrs. Archer. By all reasoning, she should've been a truck driving sumo wrestler, but with a twist of fate, she was our principal. If you Googled 'mean' and 'ornery' her picture would show up. She was the poster child for demon spawn.Like the teacher in 'Bloody Reunion', Mrs. Archer was just as devious, and her former students sure let her know this - in spades. The acting, cinematography, and special effects were all pretty good here. The ending confused me somewhat because of its twists, but it was still enjoyable. I came close to giving this movie a 9 except it got pretty maudlin towards the end. Otherwise, though, it's definitely a good movie worth seeing. As a gore hound I was satisfied. Yes, there could have been a little bit more, but I'll take what I can get. 'Bloody Reunion' was definitely worth the price of admission.
We all know that Korean's do absolutely amazing horror films. I could bore you all by listing a load, so I'll only mention Oldboy and I Saw The Devil as being two of the genres finest. But slasher films? I've never heard of a Korean slasher, but luckily for me I love Korean horror and I love slashers. Perfect match? Absolutely! Bloody Reunion managed to create a fantastic slasher that is way more than your bog-standard Friday the 13th. Instead of annoying kids, we get well-drawn out adult characters who we can care for and actually get to like. It's refreshing to see a slasher film with actual characters, instead of the usual cardboard cut outs, as seen in The Cabin in the Woods.The film opens with intrigue, giving a very quick flash-back to the young teacher giving birth to a deformed child. It's quite sad, if not stereotypical, but don't worry because what unfolds is something that's quite unconventional for the slasher genre. There's a great, if not a little too long, 30 minute sequence with all the ex-pupils coming to see their sweet old teacher. It gives us opportunity to bond with the characters and also to unveil a little more depth to the back-story, as we find out that the teacher isn't quite as rosy as she appears. It just adds to the brilliant character development.Things do get especially interesting once the killing starts! The whole jovial atmosphere changes as soon as it reaches night-time and you start to feel sympathy for everyone, especially Mrs. Park, and it's where the killer starts to make his move. The kills are brilliantly brutal with a little torture even added in for extra cringe! I found myself curling up into a ball in some parts. Bloody Reunion is certainly true to its name, and it is massively entertaining because of it. However, unlike most slasher films it's not all about the killing, there's a great deep story put in there as well, making the film even more gripping.The film would be just fine as a detailed slasher film but then it goes one step further and unveils a huge twist that had me scratching my head. You could say that it's unnecessarily confusing and it does make the film seem like a bit of a waste of time, depending on how you look at it. Nevertheless, I did find it incredibly emotional and impactive, and it added yet another intricate web to the story and the characters so I'm unsure as to whether I liked it or not.My only complaint would be, that I wish the slasher element ran for a little longer. I think the film needed a small dose of fun and I would've enjoyed more thrilling action. It also seemed a little repetitive at times with a character going to the beach and then being taken by the killer, but apart from that Bloody Reunion is a bloody good slasher film! It offers much more than your average American slasher (of course apart from The Cabin in the Woods) and is a film that I'm sure many few people in the horror community know about, which is a shame because Bloody Reunion is, in the words of SuBo, bloody fantastic!
I found this movie on Netflix one day with very little experience in East Asian Cinema. This film definitely helped set the bar for me. Atmospheric and spooky, the film details what would appear to be a rather incredulous story. Your opinion swiftly changes when the antagonist appears. While the storyline can at times seem to drag, it picks up the slack and eventually rushes to a roaring climax. I found that even the gore, which I usually find distasteful, was done creatively enough that I didn't mind. And despite a few weak performances and an occasional plot hole, the overall story is gripping with enough plot twists to keep you on your toes long after you think you have the ending pegged.
In "Bloody Reunion", a group of South Korean former class mates are invited to a reunion in a nice cottage located in the countryside. Mrs. Park, an old teacher from elementary school, who happens to be very ill and crippled, wants to see her favorite students reunited again. However, when these former class mates arrive to the cottage, the plot thickens and we realize that Mrs. Park actually wasn't exactly very nice to her students and as a consequence, they still hold a big grudge against her. Unfortunately, the old woman doesn't seem to remember much of it, maybe due to her illness or perhaps it's just a fake reaction in order to cause sympathy and avoid having her head chopped off. The only truth that can't be denied is that Mrs. Park has caused an immense scar on her students and they're all in the mood for revenge.Even though I really enjoy Asian horror films for what they are, with their repeated and yet somehow dissimilar premises, I still wanted to see something completely different. If we keep in mind that some of the finest Asian flicks were remade in the United States, frankly, I don't see why we should bash a movie that falls into the slasher category. Especially, if we keep in mind that the ending, somehow turns the whole thing around in a matter of seconds and what seemed to be a slasher at first, quickly turns into a gory drama flick with a big mystery revealed. In order to avoid possible spoilers, that's all I have to say regarding the genre of this film and its ending. While "Bloody Reunion" doesn't exactly belong to my all time favorite horror movies, I still appreciate the director's dignified effort of leaving the ghosts aside for a second and mostly focusing on a graciously gory tale about revenge. With some obvious winks to "Friday the 13th", this film somehow tricks the audience into believing something that ends up being the complete opposite. Even though I'm not a big fan of these "incredibly amazing twists" (notice the sarcasm, please) that horror movies tend to include nowadays, I dislike insulting predictable endings a lot more. These predictable endings are even more blameworthy when we're talking about a slasher or a giallo, which are two horror sub-genres that are mostly captivating because of the mystery and uncertainness. In "Bloody Reunion", the ending turns out to be pretty one-dimensional and yet quite dramatic. I will not spoil it, but it's perhaps one of the highest points in the movie and one of the main reasons why "Bloody Reunions" separates itself from the typical American slashers.