Horror Queen

THE PLOT

Se-jin Oh is a gorgeous woman who works too hard and doesn’t play at all, no boyfriend, no friends and no social life. One night she sees a strange woman in red at the train station who appears to be following her. That same night the lady grabs her before throwing herself under a train, nearly killing Se-jin in the process. Our heroine then starts watching people in the apartment next to hers and notices that at 9:56 every night, all the residents turn their lights off and in the morning someone is dead. After investigating on her own, she realizes that everything is tied to one quiet handicapped girl who is suffering abuse from everyone around her. As Se-jin gets closer to another young woman living in the building, she gets caught up in the mystery of the Apt.

FUN TRIVIA

If you’re looking for a copy of this movie, you might have a little trouble. As far as I know it’s only available in a couple of foreign formats, but the Canadian version does have English subtitles. A few people have expressed interest in releasing it here in the States but right now it’s not available.

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS

It had the scene that always manages to creep me out in older horror movies. You know the scene where someone’s laying in bed, drops their hand down and the camera slowly shows there’s someone under the bed. It doesn’t help that I’m usually in bed when I’m watching these movies either. It’s scenes like that, that make this movie truly frightening.

The girl thinks there’s someone under the bed, sees the door to her bathroom open and hears the familiar sound of a woman’s high heels clicking along the ground. By the time the big payout to the scene happened, I was already sufficiently freaked out.

There are a few scenes of the handicapped girl being sexually abused and even though it’s done without really showing anything, it still gets to me. In my opinion anyone who does that should be set on fire and possibly hung from the toes and beat to death with sticks.

Mainly it’s the sounds that got to me with this movie. The sounds of the woman’s shoes clacking against the tile floor, the creepy sound they used in the original version of The Grudge that sounds like someone’s neck cracking…those sounds do more for me than any slasher running through the woods possibly could. Well that and the scene where a woman dies after getting a needle stuck right in her throat. What can I say, the Horror Queen does not do needles.

Towards the end of the movie it does get a little confusing, with the plot seemingly going in several different directions at once. Plus a few too many flashback sequences that are presented as real time and a person who may or may not be alive. It does however lead to a heartbreaking conclusion about violence literally next door and whether you’d take a stand to stop it.