A Tale of Two Sisters: Spookie's Delight. Review on The Shining Movie

This is a review for the Korean "A Tale Of Two Sisters", as I do not know where to look for the mouth pad!

Asian Horror is apparently the hottest kind of horror. It's in and you cannot ignore it if you're craving to get spooked and have your heart race faster than the speed of light. If that is true, then my introduction to this with A Tale of two Sisters has been a good one.

Let me start with professing my love for this genre. It's too unilateral, too slow, too predictable & too few of them. But aah, the heart craves for those simple dosages from time to time. And what do we get? Silly renditions based on the "horror is equal to random sound effects" philosophy. Or "spooky is equal to murders to the power of 100" philosophy. So I watched The Shining, and the thing that spooked me out was the wife's face (Jack Nicholson? No sir, not spooky. Funny, but not spooky). And comon! The setting was like a slutty cheerleader dying to be devoured by the high school senior but was left alone with only a passing glance. And instead of being frustrated and getting on with life, she just hides herself in some unknown corner. I was so sure there would be a turn of events to jolt the audience when it gradually dawns on them that its Nicholson who is making a run for his life, cuz it’s the son/ wife/ both who are the master spooks! Or give us that crazed warm rapid blood rushing in & outta our coronaries when the setting is up to some mischief. But nooo. Why would that happen. Why will some one give you such tears of joy. So you have instead Nicholson grinning around charmingly, and you know from the start what he is upto. I do not mean to bring down the movie, Stephen King IS a master of this genre (although I should have READ the shining I think so) and Stanley Kubrik did good , real good with clockwork orange- Talking of which THIS was a real spooker! You could feel your gut crawling outta yr skin at the manner at which the baddies conveniently raped women and inflicted violence with no shame or morose. You also cringed with pain to watch him tied up, his eyes tied up open too. And you didn't think it served him right when he had no will left to fight against the world. The high shock element was the sure shot spook factor. The Ring comes to my memory too, a rare one which kept me from falling off into peaceful slumber. I could picture Samaira crawling outta my television set, my taps, my cupboards, & oh good lord, she didn’t spare my shitpot too. I know not know why my favourite bollywood actress could have named her first born this horrendous witch of a name!

So brings me back to Asian Horror. Of course the serious as hell caveat here is that you cannot be a casual watcher. You not only have to read fast (subtitles), but also keep up with who is who. You may be the jet setting well travelled type, but you can be pretty sure to stumble upon realising that you cannot make out the sister from the other sister. Or mother. Or daughter. Oh hell, I may me treading on the clichéd ground, but they all look uncannily similar!! Once this is out of your way, you can allow yourself to be marvelled by what they have in store. A Tale of two sisters is about a family dealing with relationships and their own preconceived notions & prejudices that lead to severe & harsh consequences. There are layer within layers, within layers. They are all peeled to reveal and the more it's revealed, the more it's are out there to confuse you. You will be told what happened, but there are those little things that may reveal later, when you ponder over & go through the scenes in your head. It is not left open-ended, but there ARE a few things that are left for your imagination to judge.

So what you think is not what you get. Neither is it diametrically the opposite. It's slow with thankfully few jarring sound effects, and while your brain goes through the several permutations & combinations, you end up liking whatever is hurled at you.

Performance wise I think the twisted step mom was at her best. I will keep a watch for any Korean spooker in my library to follow up on this delight.