Film Reviews

R-Point

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Woo-seong Kam
• Details: South Korea, 107mins, 15s.

In a remote part of North Vietnam a small platoon of Korean soldiers, led by the tough Lieutenant Choi (Kam), are on a mission to find a patrol of nine soldiers that went missing six months ago. What starts out as a boring routine search party, soon takes a turn for the supernatural: the men start reporting sightings of a ghost patrol and receive blood curdling radio transmissions from the lost soldiers begging to be rescued. When the disappearance of the platoon's corporal is reported to HQ, Choi is told that the corporal belonged to the original nine that went missing, R-Point turns surreal. R-Point is a slow tension builder as director Kong lets the viewer get comfortable before teasing out the spooky plot. Most of the action takes place off camera, letting imaginations run riot and Kong, knowing that the unseen can be so often scarier, delivers a sinister atmosphere instead of blood and gore. Where R-Point falls down is the night scenes; the images on screen are too dark to know what is going on and since it's a ghost story, a lot of scenes take place at night. Horror fans might find it a bit light, but R-Point is a psychological thriller more than a ghost story.

Review by Gavin Burke