Yep, I know it’s been a while, but your Favorite Catgirl’s back at it again, this time with a look at the latest creepy Korean ghost story to find it’s way to my mailbox, 2012′s haunted video thriller “Don’t Click”. Filled with all the expected creepy ghost story elements, I just knew this one would be up my alley. 
Our synopsis? How about this: “A young girl, Jung Mi (Kang Byul), eager to seize fame as the latest Internet video sensation discovers a notorious forbidden Internet video featuring a creepy ritual video starring a high school girl who has committed suicide. Soon after watching it, Se Hee begins to experience strange incidents that put her life in danger. Now, her older sister Se Hee (Park Bo Young) may be the only who can save her… if she can avoid becoming another victim of the curse herself!!”
With elements of “The Ring” and the plethora of other cursed video stories in Asian horror cinema, it certainly sounds like we’re not going to stray too far outside some very familiar territory, but then…. that’s never stopped this wee lady before, so why let it now?
Neko knows my regular visitors are certainly not going to let a little thing like that slow them down either, so without any further adieu lets all take a peek and see what it’s all about, shall we?
Now, since we’ve all been down this familiar “long haired ghost” road before, it’s certainly fair to say that if we were expecting something new or novel out of this particular film, well then we’re all probably going to be disappointed. “Don’t Click” just isn’t that sort of movie. Not at all.
So, does that mean we’re in for a fairly boring rehash of old plot elements from all those old movies making this one seem to be nothing more than just another “been there-seen that” exercise in horror film-making? 
Sadly…. for the most part… this wee Catgirl would have to honestly answer, “Yes”. Luckily for us…. at least in my experience, Korean films are usually well made, and even the most imitative of them rarely fail to be somewhat entertaining on some level. I’d have to say that that’s where this one falls… in that comfortable, if not inspired level of genre film.
We really don’t get too much to work with. There are really only three main characters in our tale, our main heroine Si Hee (played by Park Bo Young) who seems to be stuck in a life balanced between her rather boring job, trying to keep her techie boyfriend Joon-Hyuk (played by Joo Won) from possibly cheating on her, and worrying about her younger sister Jung Mi (played by Kang Byul), a high school girl obsessed with attaining that somewhat dubious goal of becoming an “Internet celebrity”. 
You know the idea…. post stupid, often risqué videos on social networking sites to gain the most “views” and thereby clinch the title of “most watched”. But everyone wants that fame…. so the videos have to become more daring… more controversial… and more intrusive into the lives of strangers on the street who’s lives become nothing more than fodder for the camera. If that sounds sort of stupid… especially given the fleeting attention span of the average Internet surfer, it is….. and that’s really the whole point of our story.
It’s this idea that raises the film up from being just another “cursed video ghost story” and gives it something to really think about. That and the way that social media’s obsession with voyeurism at any cost can be something that easily becomes more dangerous to the lives and happiness of people than any vengeful ghost could ever think of being…. and all without anyone even giving it a second thought.
With a goal like this, it isn’t long before selfish little Jung Mi gets herself waaaay over her head looking for the “next big thing” to emulate and basically blackmails her sister’s boyfriend into getting her a copy of a “forbidden” video from his job at the police cyber-crimes department. 
Gonna be a problem? Oh yeah…..
What she gets turns out to be the final video made by a suicidal schoolgirl seeking to cast a curse that would allow her to become a vengeful ghost and get revenge on those people that ruined her family with that same overly intrusive video filming hobby that was used to frame her innocent father as some sort of a creepy train station molester. Her father ruined… her mother pushed to suicide, and finally driven to the utter depths of despair by the futility of trying to fight back against the anonymity of the Internet she ends her life in a ritualistic suicide. The video of that death soon ensnares Jung Mi and eventually leads to her own suffering when the ghost, living within the internet itself and able to manipulate video cameras and web cams, takes a video of her innocently frolicking about her bedroom and posts it to the web under her name.
Soon she finds the harsh glare of “celebrity” to be a lot less glamorous than she imagined… and worse, the ghost has only begun to torture her by ruining her reputation. It’s ultimate goal is to brutally kill her and anyone else who’s seen the video clip in blind obsessive revenge.
Although at first skeptical of the supernatural goings-on, Si Hee eventually becomes convinced that her sister’s rapidly deteriorating mental state is the least of her worries, and so she and Joon-Hyuk try to end the curse before it’s too late for them all. Got a sense that it just plain won’t happen? Then you are a very, very perceptive person indeed…. or you’ve just plain seen a crap load of these movies… just like a certain Catgirl, Hehehehe!! 
While not exactly the most original horror film out of Korea in a while, director Kim Tae Kyung at least seems to have it all well in hand. Having also directed “Ghost” and “Muoi: The Legend of a Portrait”, he’s definitely no newcomer to the genre. Still…. in all honesty I have to say this one still feels less like a real success and more like just like he’s doing a workmanlike job of earning a paycheck and I suppose that’s the biggest problem. I can’t really say I didn’t like “Don’t Click”…. but it also didn’t really scare me either. As a horror movie, that’s definitely not what you want as an experience. I suppose an audience less exposed to films of this genre might full well have a different feeling, but then they probably haven’t logged as many hours of ghost story watchin’ as this wee Catgirl.
So then…. even with it’s interesting comment on modern social media stardom and given the rather tepid scares and my pretty much overall “take it or leave it” feeling for it, I suppose it would be fair to give it 3 “Meows” out of 5. I can’t really say that it’s a film to miss… but you’d probably want to really be a fan of Asian Ghost films to want to plunk down the 29$US that a Korean DVD costs these days. A better option will definitely be to wait till the more budget friendly HK or Malay release comes along. (Hopefully they won’t also inexplicably translate the Korean slang for “boobs” into English as “boops” for the subtitles either…. something that had Carolyn snorting soda out of her nose on “Movie Night”. Not a pretty sight… and definitely the scariest thing to happen to me that evening. )
As always, there’s a super creepy Trailer at Youtube to get us all in the mood for the spooky goings-on. So enjoy!!
Well, once again seems as though we are in sync again. I watched this a couple of days ago as part of what turned out to be ‘cursed Internet video’ night, along with the risible Sadako 3D. Should have my review up tomorrow, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself, other than do say, they aren’t too far different to yours, but I’m for once more charitable, but potentially because of the movie it was up against!
Hahaha!! I must say…. we do seem to have a real ability to watch these things so “synchronized” at times. Truly amazing when you think that these are Asian released films…. somehow being hunted down and acquired by two different people in two countries far removed from Asia and separated by an ocean and 6 time zones.
Can’t really say why this one so failed to grab me…. It’s not a terrible film. Maybe I was just reaching my “mental overload” limit for ghost films this month. Could mean I need a genre switch to shake things up a bit.
“Sadako 3D”? Hmmmmm….. it’s been a long while since I watched “Ringu”, a shame you say it’s so darn disappointing…. I’d considered picking it up, but had been waffling back and forth on the idea.
6 time zones? Blimey, that puts the world into context! I think it’s just the general concept of these movies is tired. Even trying to freshen it up a little with modern technologies seems somewhat lacklustre. As you say, maybe some of the disappointment is with the fact that the director is quite capable of excelling with these types of movie.
It does have a bit of a similarity with Sadako 3d other than the concept, it too has a tiny cast. This one actually attracted me because of Park Bo-young — she was excellent in Speed Scandal, and I had some hopes she could develop into someone rather special. On this showing, she needs meatier roles to fulfil the promise.
Change of genre you say? Well, of course we have Miss Go to write about (hint hint), but maybe you should delve into one of those so called ‘good’ movies you think I write about
And Sadako 3d? I know you’ll see it eventually :-p
It sounds so cliche! Like many other Asian Horror. They should start creating something new like when Ringu came out.
I am a bit confused with this sentence tho > Hopefully they won’t also inexplicably translate the Korean slang for “boobs” into English as “boops” for the subtitles either << what do you mean?
$29 for a DVD is darn expensive. I just order The Mighty Boosh DVD for 3 seasons and only cost $56 and I am 100% sure that the boosh is WAAAY better than this one.
Hahaha!! I forgot that some of my visitors wouldn’t know this one!! “Boobs” is English slang for a woman’s breasts. The word “Boops” has no meaning at all, but reminds me of an old 1940′s cartoon character called Betty Boop (famous for being a little risqué. a little naughty…. and yes, for having big “boobs”…..
)
The Korean translation messed this up…. but I’m wondering now if that wasn’t purposeful like the way Hindi films never properly translate the English profanities they use in their spoken dialog to the English subtitles……
Oh yes…. official Korean DVD’s have gotten way expensive in the last few years. At least they aren’t as expensive as Japanese ones…. those now run anywhere from 45-65$ US. That’s why I usually watch the HK release of most of their films.
I understand what boobs means…but how did the Korean translation mess that up?
Well…. I’m not certain what the Korean word used was as they rattle along far too fast for me to catch most individual words or phrases. They were talking about the rumor that Jung Mi might have had breast augmentation surgery…. something that you get the idea many very young Korean girls are resorting to in an effort to “be popular” in modern Korean High School culture.
Anyway they translated that discussion into the English subtitles as something along the lines of: “What? I’ve never even considered that. My boops aren’t fake!!” Carolyn found that just hilarious. She said she wants to discuss her “boops” with all her friends…..
I got to thinking that maybe this was one of those “spell checker” moments that slipped by the editors of the DVD.
How funny. I thinks it’s probably a semi informed typo. “Boobs” is such a mild euphansim in English as to be not worth trying to mistype. My guess is the translator was going for Boobs, rather than the more mixed um T-word, but just got it wrong. The Betty Boop connection is however a delicious irony. It’s a horror film with a mildly titilating aspect, so I can’t believe they got all coy.
And yes, Korean DVDs are expensive, made more frustrating as they do tend to be of excellent quality, packed with extra features that us non hangul speakers will have no chance of understanding. I try and wait for the Hong Kong releases, even though they are often very bare bones, and often quite disappointing in terms of picture quality (not always mind you). On the other hand, Japanese DVDs are just prohibitively expensive, coming in at twice that in dollars, and English subtitles for films other than art house or marquee releases are just non existent.
I think what surprised me was the fact that I’ve always come to expect such perfect English subtitle translations from the Koreans…. I can’t even remember the last time I had a film with even the smallest mistake.
Now Thai film…. sometimes those English subtitles are a real hoot!
Thank you for your review, as usual. We might watch this one eventually. I do admire the quality of Korean films. My two Korean favorites, so far (not horror) are “Mother” and “The Good, The Bad and The Weird”. That’ last one is by Jee-woon Kim who directed “A Tale of Two Sisters”, which I haven’t seen yet, though it’s on my list.
Aside from that, I hope you and Carolyn and the kitty are having a wonderful Thanksgiving.
I would think this one will make it over the pond to us eventually, but while you wait, “A Tale of Two Sisters” is definitely worth a look. I did do a review of it when it came out at the old site, Delirium Vault, but somehow it appears to have disappeared in my move here to my new digs at the Litterbox… d’oh!! It’s a good film, and worth a look…
Ahhhhh…. yes. Thanksgiving was nice this year, and Carolyn and I got to spend it with her sister’s family again. Now that we are back home, I figure on writing all about it later this afternoon. (Hint!! Hint!!)