R-POINT (Korea, 2004)
Directed by: Gong Su-Chang
Starring: Gam Woo-Seong, Son Byeong-Ho, Oh Tae-Gyeong

What’s the only thing worse than the Vietnam War? The Vietnam War with ghosts. A séance designed to exorcise the demons stemming from of South Korea’s involvement with overseas conflict (they fought with the US in Vietnam, and they’re fighting with the US in Iraq now), R-POINT is a psychological horror movie with the focus firmly on the psychological. The South Korean brass freak out when they start receiving radio transmissions from a patrol that went into an area marked as R-Point on the map a long time ago, and never came out. The freaky factor gets more intense when the transmissions start coming in French. Before you can say, “I love the smell of ectoplasm in the morning!” they’ve saddled up a shell-shocked commanding officer (Gam Woo-Sung) and sent him into misty, murky, Charlie-infested R-Point to find out just what the hell is going on. Turns out: Hell is exactly what’s going on.

Holed up in a crumbling French villa with his rapidly unraveling soldiers, and unable to find his way out of R-Point, the movie kicks into high gear as war’s legacy of rape and torture gets worked out on the soldiers in gory fashion. Taking the time to give every soldier his due, R-Point is one of the few horror movies you’ll see where the finale doesn’t rely on special effects but on acting. 

Summertime is horror time in Korea, and every summer has seen a slew of high-grossing horror movies hit the screens. But in 2004 all that fell apart as one idea-bereft horror flick after another bombed. Then came R-POINT, which was the big horror hit that summer needed, and after watching it you’ll know why.