Bloody Reunion

Many of the recent Asian horror movies have been ghost stories involving haunted objects—houses, phones, videocassettes—but Lim Dae-Woong's directorial debut offers a throwback to the American screamers of the 1970s and ‘80s, usually titled after some holiday or other, in which people are stalked by some madman they'd mistreated in the past. The generically-titled Bloody Reunion (the original Korean title roughly translates as To Sir With Love) follows a group of twentysomethings summoned to a remote seaside abode for a reunion with their old teacher, a wheelchair-bound woman in ill health. As flashbacks reveal, the days in the old schoolyard were hardly idyllic, and the former students bear grudges of one sort or another against the teacher and each other. Before long, a mysterious killer—disguised with a rabbit mask once worn by the teacher's deformed son, whom she kept hidden in the basement—shows up and begins disposing of the guests in extremely gruesome fashion. The revelation of the villain's identity may come as a bit of a letdown, but the movie still has a few more twists to offer (extravagantly unconvincing, but typical of the genre). Nicely made and decently acted, Bloody Reunion breaks no new ground, but it is a slick revival of an old formula. A strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD extras include deleted scenes (with optional director's commentary), an interview with Lim, and featurettes on the “making of,” makeup/SFX, and the publicity photo shoot. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a decent spam-in-a-cabin flick.] (F. Swietek)