Directed by Ahn Sang-hoon
Review by Aaron W. Graham


Released by Tartan Asia Extreme
Running Time: 97 minutes
Rating: NR
Color format: Color
Audio/Subtitles: Dolby Digital 5.1 (Korean), DTS (Korean), and 2.0 (Korean) / English, Spanish
Region Code: NTSC, 1
Aspect Ratio: Widescreen (1.85:1
16:9 Enhanced: Yes
Special Features: Director/Cast Commentary, Behind-the-Scenes, Making-Of, Interview with the Cast, Interview with Musical Director, Deleted Scenes, Theatrical Trailers
Trailer Online: No

Another entry under the Tartan Asia Extreme banner, ARANG establishes itself early on as being not unlike its more celebrated kin, partaking in the same overindulged, yet genuinely spine-chilling imagery of the Asian horror film, particularly that now-ingrained stereotype of a young girl with a long, flowing black mane edging her way to the foreground of the camera, with bloody eyes, nails scratching and voice eerily croaking all of the way. This ghostly likeness has already turned up in numerous spoofs and television ads, always a sure sign that a trend is treading water and on the way out of favor. Still, with a number of these films cluttering up video store shelves with their vaguely similar box cover art, there’s got to be a few inventive and/or dissenting alternatives in the bunch, thanks mostly to courageous young filmmakers not content in making carbon copies of the biggest successes, RINGU (1998) and JU-ON (2000). ARANG is curiously a mix of the two, a South Korean mishmash derivative of the all-too familiar tropes and archetypes, but subsequently refreshing for how the horror is chronicled and paralleled with a police inquiry conducted by a realistically portrayed female coping with painful reminders of her own past.

Investigating the mysterious deaths of two men who’ve died from a poisonous gas that spontaneously discharged from their own lungs, detective So-Yeung (Song Yun-ah) and her inexperienced partner Hyun-ki (Dong-Wook Lee) interview a number of witnesses and suspects before uncovering a connection between the murders to a perceived suicide at a Salt Mine years earlier. So-Yeung, being a former victim herself, makes it a point to solve the case, following up on all possible leads and dragging her scruffy-haired rookie companion all over town. In the end, it’s a number of forces at work, both apparitional and something less than supernatural (but always close to home for So-Yeung). All involved are tenuously associated to the rape and subsequent death of a young woman, who’s seen in jarringly white flashbacks with her photographer lover, a person laid bare in front of our eyes from minute one.

The young woman’s ghostly presence manifests itself through technology, appearing over the internet or digital cameras, but first time feature director Ahn Sang-hoon seems unsure in what he’s trying to say with this (perhaps how all of this high-tech equipment alienates the growing populace from meaningful relationships with one another?) and it feels like an idea plucked wholesale from the far better KAIRO (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001). In fact, there’s the distinct feeling that Sang-hoon is simply towing the line when it comes to these scare sequences, with all of the gore saved for the relatively innocuous and thrill-free “C.S.I.” meets “Quincy” scenes inside the morgue. It’s not hard to see that it’s the detective story that interests the filmmaker, which may help to explain the doubling up on the reasoning for the murders, and why the supernatural and the plausible explanations of the case don’t quite reconcile with one another.

Tartan Asia Extreme handles the transfer marginally well, but the sound (in Dolby 5.1, 2.0, or DTS) is kind of an issue, as it is with a number of other releases from this company, with instances of blurry dialogue and indistinct chatter coalescing in all of the wrong channels, making it difficult to hear at times. In the extras department, Tartan Asia has seen fit to import an audio commentary track with the South Korean director and his cast (readable through English subtitles). It’s a worthy addition, although not essential, as the pair mostly chat about the day-to-day problems of being on the set. A Making-Of (featuring the main cast and crew), Behind-the-Scenes (with such members of the crew as the make-up FX person), Cast Interviews, and an Interview with the Musical Director will tell you all you could possibly want to know about the production. 10 uneventful Deleted Scenes are also included. Theatrical trailers for a number of other Tartan Asia Extreme releases goes to ensure that, for the time being, we’ll be seeing no shortage in Asian horror making it to North America.

Sang-hoon hedges his bests with the more well-known aspects of the Asian horror film, directing a handful of shock sequences with expertise and ease, but the true heart of the picture is the bond between the two victims, a female detective who was able to move past her tragedy, and a woman whose chance was savagely taken away. The unsettling conclusion will raise a lot of questions because of its ambiguity, but it does offer a degree of closure for both the deceased and the living, albeit with grave consequences for those who viciously attacked the two. It’s among these disturbing elements that ARANG gets right, for peeking out of those stringy, black-haired bangs are quite a few questions of morality involving revenge and restitution.