Three... Extremes

[CrispinG]

This is a trilogy of short Korean horror films out on limited release Stateside right now. It doesn't look like it's getting any coverage in the UK, let alone a release, so I thought I'd ask if anyone's been lucky enough to catch it, or knows anything about it?

The three films are "Dumplings", which has received the greatest praise, "Cut" by Chan-woo Park of "Oldboy" notoriety, and "Box" by Miike Takashi, which sounds hideously disturbing. The first is about an ageing actress who seeks out a woman selling rejuvenating dumplings from her apartment. It's apparently the most shocking and unwatchable of the lot. "Cut" sounds like a cross between "Salo" and "Saw"; a man wakes up to find a child tied up on a sofa, his wife suspended in wire above a piano and a jealous lunatic forcing him to commit some terrible sin. The last sounds bizarre; the plot is the recurring nightmare of a novelist who may have been a child circus performer with her sister and father and may or may not have trapped her sister in a tiny box and left her there.

I'm anxious to see it, personally.

Trailer.

[CrispinG]

Nope, nobody cares. Never mind, then!

[CurryKitten]

It's been "out there" for a while, and was discussed in the thread about hard to watch scenes. I brought it up for one of the scenes in Dumplings. Are they billed as Korean, because there appeared to be 1 Korean short, and a Chinese and Japanese one as well.

As you said, Cut reminded me a lot of films like saw, Cut seemed quite straightforward, but the end scene left me with questions. Box was very much the traditional Japanese horror complete with a young girl looking down with hair obscuring her face. Quite weird that one, left me with a general feeling of "huh ?"

Leaving dumpling as the most straight forward, but perhaps the most disturbing of them, with a particlarly hard to watch (for me at least) scene.

Certainly worth a watch though, I enjoyed it.

[letsbook]

Personally I found dumpling to be one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen... its really well shot and a great concept for a horror piece... especially ni Asia where we eat this kind of food everyday. On the other hand I was expecting big things from Mr. Park, with Old Boy and Sympathy For Lady Vengeance under his belt but I found Cut to leave far too many questions, maybe it's just a Korean thing... I asked my Korean friends about it and they all find it their favourite... and as Currykitten said, Box is your standard Japanese horror fare.

They're well worth a watch though, if not just for Dumplings... living in Korea it's very, very hard for me to eat mandu anymore...

[mr.miffed]

All three are excellent but cut was my favourite.

Dumplings is kind of icky by the least scary if you ask me. Miike's is a ghost story with some absolutely beautiful visuals but I found myself going "what?" at the end, even after two viewing's I'm still not 100% sure what it's all about.

[therearerules]

What happens in Dumplings that's so hard to watch?

[mr.miffed]

What happens in Dumplings that's so hard to watch?

←

There's a minging as fuck back street abortion and the dumplings are made with foetuses(foeti?) and once you know this the crunchy sound when people are eating them is horrible. Not too mention when the woman who was eating them goes manky because she eats dumplings made with a bad foetus. The foetus was bad because it was a child of father daughter incest.

[therearerules]

There's a minging as fuck back street abortion and the dumplings are made with foetuses(foeti?) and once you know this the crunchy sound when people are eating them is horrible. Not too mention when the woman who was eating them goes manky because she eats dumplings made with a bad foetus. The foetus was bad because it was a child of father daughter incest.

←

Well I won't be settling down to watch this one with the missus then. I hate being intrigued by films I'll never see. Feel free to spoiler the rest of them.

[mr.miffed]

Well I won't be settling down to watch this one with the missus then. I hate being intrigued by films I'll never see. Feel free to spoiler the rest of them.

←

This is a pretty massive spoiler.

The miike one is about incest if I remember rightly, two twin contortionist little girls who are circus performers and their father sleeps with them. One of them gets murdered, I can't remember if it's the father or the other twin, much weirdness and happens and I get really confused but leave with a "I have no idea what just happened but it sure was awesome" feeling.

The park chan wook(sp?) one is not supernatural at all, It's a psycho thriller. A director and his wife get menaced by an extra who's lost the plot. He has some ingenious saw style "pranks" for the unlucky pair. I think it turns out to be an elborate suicide attempt if I remember correctly. He makes the director murder his(the psyhco's) son to save his(the directors) wife, which is nice.

[Albert Fish]

I watched this with my missus, before hand she warned me "This better not have any violence towards pregnant women."

Ooops!!!

I protested my innocence, how could I have guessed? (Well I could have read the back of the box!)

She still hasen't forgiven me for this or for putting Old Boy on.

Maybe I'll reccomend Memories of Murder next.

[Mark X]

I tried to watch each of the three stories, but gave up on each. The bit with the

blender

was the bit where I gave up on cut. Ick. It's certainly no Jam Films 1, 2 or S.

[Rowan Morrison]

I watched this with my missus

'Missus', is it? I'm printing this page off and framing it.

before hand she warned me "This better not have any violence towards pregnant women."

At least it didn't have any incest, for once. You can't win, can you?

I liked 3E, with some reservations. Cut was a bit too OTT for my liking, and the Miike section was very nice to look at with a respectably hideous denouement (albeit telegraphed well before the revelation), but veered into trad. Ringu territory a little, which was disappointing. Dumplings was excellent, though, and on the strength of the 3E segment I picked up the full-length version, which is going cheap on all the usual Asian DVD sites, along with 3E itself.

It's definintely worth a watch - I can't resist a horror anthology, at any rate, but this is a decent effort.

[mr.miffed]

At least it didn't have any incest, for once. You can't win, can you?

←

Dumplings has incest.

[Rowan Morrison]

Dumplings has incest.

←

Oh, yeah. Well, it's hardly integral to the plot, that's some consolation. I don't think Old Boy went down very well in the Fish household.

[mr.miffed]

Oh, yeah. Well, it's hardly integral to the plot, that's some consolation. I don't think Old Boy went down very well in the Fish household.

←

It's pretty intregal!

The reason the older lady who's been eating the dumplings starts to "melt" is because she's eating dumplings made with the aborted feotus of a child of incest from a girl who was abused by her father. It's like the main thing in dumplings.

[Rowan Morrison]

It's pretty intregal!

The reason the older lady who's been eating the dumplings starts to "melt" is because she's eating dumplings made with the aborted feotus of a child of incest from a girl who was abused by her father. It's like the main thing in dumplings.

←

It's important to the plot specifics, I'll grant, but it's not on a thematic par with OldBoy's use of incest, where it's utterly central. I wouldn't say it was the 'main thing' in Dumplings - it's not important that the foetus is the result of incest specifically, it's important that it's 'tainted' in such a way as to bring about the end... incest here is 'just' a means to that end. Clearly, I'd forgotten the role it played, without forgetting the overall 'theme' of the film, the visuals or (most distressing of all) the bloody sounds...

I'll have to watch the full-length version soon and see how it compares.

[mr.miffed]

It's important to the plot specifics, I'll grant, but it's not on a thematic par with OldBoy's use of incest, where it's utterly central. I wouldn't say it was the 'main thing' in Dumplings - it's not important that the foetus is the result of incest specifically, it's important that it's 'tainted' in such a way as to bring about the end... incest here is 'just' a means to that end. Clearly, I'd forgotten the role it played, without forgetting the overall 'theme' of the film, the visuals or (most distressing of all) the bloody sounds...

I'll have to watch the full-length version soon and see how it compares.

←

I wasn't aware until this thread that there was a full version! I'm definitely getting it.

And I see what you mean.

[CrispinG]

I watched this with my missus, before hand she warned me "This better not have any violence towards pregnant women."

Ooops!!!

I protested my innocence, how could I have guessed?  (Well I could have read the back of the box!)

←

Thanks for that, Albert.

[jonamok]

So guys, what part of your brain actually garners enjoyment from this sort of material?

Just wondering like...

[Rowan Morrison]

So guys, what part of your brain actually garners enjoyment from this sort of material?

Just wondering like...

←

?

It's just a film, and I don't think it's particularly 'extreme'... arguably it's more thematically extreme than visually so. The reputation it seems to be getting in this thread isn't really deserved at all. It's nowhere near as unpleasant as the start of Kill Bill, for example.

[CurryKitten]

So guys, what part of your brain actually garners enjoyment from this sort of material?

Just wondering like...

←

I personally though Dumplings went a bit far, but as Rowan says - these are just short films, pure works of fiction etc. They all have characters, narrative and a plot.

I think you can start to worry when you are watching things that don't have any of these and are just "scenes" of nasties, like (from what I've heard, I haven't seen them) the Guinea Pig series of films. Or some real things were used like the actual dead bodies used in Men behind the sun, and the turtle in Canibal holocaust

[Shoes]

Box was a bit disappointing. I felt it tried a bit too hard to be disturbing, but it failed. At least on me.

Dumplings was grotesque, but excellent. Some nice visuals. Not too sure about the ending.

Cut was enjoyable, but nothing spectacular. It confused me, and didn't really make me wince until the end.

In conclusion: 3059/4000!