20131023: Horror Review--Muoi

Muoi: Legend of a Portrait

1. Production Fundamentals; reception
1. Korean live action feature length film, 2007, NR, 94 minutes, horror.  Spoken languages Vietnamese and Korean; subtitles in English. Aspect: 2.35
2. IMDB: 6.0/10.0 from 548 users.  Estimated budget, 2.3 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 62% from 268 user ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 49,748 audience ratings.
5. Directed by Tae-Kyung Kim; screenplay by Zizak and Tae-Kyung Kim.
6. Starring: Ye-ryeon Cha as Seo-yeon, Anh Thu as Muoi, An Jo as Yun-hui.


2. Setup, Plot
1. Yun-hui travels from Korea to Vietnam to learn about the legend of a painting of a woman named Muoi.  Seo-yeon meets her there, and guides her regarding the legend.  The two women have some sort of past but have not seen one another for three years.


2. Seo-yeon explains the Muoi story in brief while walking in the places where it happened.  Muoi was born of low parentage, but managed to attract an artist who took time to paint her portrait.  Unfortunately, he was engaged to a rich, vindictive woman, and had to return to her.  Muoi's rival came to her while he was gone, and had Muoi's legs broken; she also threw a pint or so of acid on Muoi's face.  When the artist tried to see Muoi, she would not see him because of her damaged face, and subsequently hung herself over the loss.  The story goes that she became a grudge ghost because of the unresolved anger and desire for vengeance.


3. Yun-hui takes this in.  With more details and embellishments, she hopes to write a bestselling book. Seo-yeon hands her a batch of old papers, photographs, and notes that she had collected for Yun-hui.  Yun-hui starts through the stack; Seo-yeon starts a large painting.


4. Through some machinations, they get to see a copy of a painting of Muoi.  Just after this, Yun-hui tells Seo-yeon that she had already seen a painting of Muoi.  When she tries to show the photo to Seo-yeon, the camera had only a blank.  Seo-yeon tells Yun-hui that there was no painting there; it had to have been that Muoi's ghost.  Yun-hui dreams about Seo-yeon confronting her about how she had libelled Seo-yeon in her last book.


5. Oi, this films seems to be much more about Yun-hui's guilt about writing ill of Seo-yeon in her previous book than anything else.  The two women have a confrontation about the book, and Yun-hui decides to return to Korea.  Before she goes, Seo-yeon tells her of how a woman had commissioned three men to rape her while her boyfriend filmed it.  This was why Seo-yeon left Korea, never to return.  Yun-hui did not know about this.


6. The two make nice. Seo-yeon has some sort of problem overnight, and Yun-hui goes to a temple to find out more about the case.  The temple seems to have a lot of Muoi artifacts.


7. This is the point where the film really gets creepy.  It proceeds quickly to a grim and thorough conclusion.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Writer works off her guilt over trashing a friend in her last book.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Fine.


2. Sound: 10/10 No problems.


3. Acting: 7/10 A little uneven but mostly good.


4. Screenplay: 9/10 Comes to a reasonable conclusion given the build up.


5. Special Effects: 7/10 Reasonable.