During the Vietnam war, a motley platoon of Korean soldiers, led by a sadistic sergeant and a lieutenant who has a reputation for losing men, are sent to find a unit that disappeared six months ago. They make their camp in an abandoned building in the middle of sacred ground and immediately are engulfed in supernatural activity.
There’s nothing new cinematically about a group of soldiers going on a mission and finding themselves trapped, fighting horror or sci-fi genre creatures. This describes half the movies made for the SciFi channel. Normally the critters are werewolves or aliens or gargoyles, but ghosts fit the bill. Since R-Point shares the low-budget problem of not having enough of a cast (the “city” at the beginning is almost abandoned and the military base has a serious lack of soldiers), it looks like this is Korea’s answer to Reign of the Gargoyles, or to be charitable, Dog Soldiers. But R-Point strives to be more. With tone, it succeeds. For a time, this is a creepy film that works not only as a thriller, but as a statement about the insane and never ending nature of war. For a time… Then it falls apart.
The problems are two fold. First, the object of terror is so vague that it drifts from eerie through annoying to boring. Mystery is wonderful, and the best supernatural films keep a veil over many of the details, but there are limits. A little clarification would have gone a long way. The soldiers might be haunted by a single vengeful female ghost, or a few thousands ghosts (or anything in between). Or perhaps there are no ghosts at all, but spirits that protect the sacred ground. They may be lost in time, with everything cycling back to the beginning…or not. Since the ghosts (or spirits or hallucinations from one ghost) don’t look frightening, but just like ordinary people, the scares have to come from the atmosphere and the situation, and since we never know the situation, it becomes routine.
The lack of coherence is a minor problem next to the ludicrous behavior of the soldiers. Each character is given personality traits and a history so we can tell who is who, but they all fade together (except the lieutenant and sergeant) anyway because under those few quirks, they all behave the same way: They whine constantly. They also grab each other by the collar and make threats (sure, once is OK, but it keeps happening). When not whining and picking unfulfilled fights, they shout unflattering names and yelp in fear at everything. The lights flicker and they all howl. Then they whine about not going home at which point they toss around insults and someone grabs someone else’s collar. The scene ends. Now they find a dead body in the grass. They all blubber, and follow that up with whining, insults, and a threat. Please, ghost, kill these people. I don’t understand Korean, so maybe the subtitles are partly to blame, though I doubt that. If I trust them (and if you don’t know Korean, you have no choice), then the soldiers begin or end every other sentence with “asshole.” “Asshole, what did you say?” “Where are you going asshole?” “Asshole, don’t say that again.” Yeah, that’s good dialog.
This is another might-have-been K-horror flick. The location is awe-inspiring, with marvelous and slightly sinister looking Cambodian ruined temples and idols, and they’re the real deal. Makes me want to run there and do the tourist thing. The feel of the movie works, and a few twists are chilling (the identity of the first victim will have you grabbing your remote to check what you missed). But it’s not enough. The script needed three or four re-writes, and only after a long discussion with all the filmmakers about what the movie was supposed to mean. As is, it doesn’t mean much and is a major disappointment.