Lady Vengeance

Occasionally, I'll take a chance and watch a particular movie, one that I know little about, gambling that it will be a good one and potential classic. Sometimes the gamble pays off, and sometimes it doesn't.

Lady Vengeance seemed to me to be a relatively safe investment. It had a lot of glowing reviews by people who seemed to share my movie interests, it was directed by Chan-wook Park of Oldboy fame, a movie which I liked, and had a revenge plot similar to Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, which I also enjoyed.

Safe bet right? Unfortunately, no. It started out nicely, with interesting plot about a girl accused of kidnapping and murder, and sentenced to a women's prison for more than a decade. While incarcerated, she befriends some of her inmates and earns their trust through various means such as helping to kill other inmates who were victimizing them, and taking care of them while they were sick.

The problem is, the movie is too slow. And I thought it got too artsy and cute. It tries to inject humor where it shouldn't, and gets over melodramatic in parts where it seemed unnecessary. I found myself getting bored, and felt cheated as some parts just stretched out too uncomfortably long.

The worst parts where the ones with the female inmate oral sex. Usually lesbian scenes are nice, but not this one, ugh. And the final extended overly long climactic scene where the families of the victims get to take revenge on the main kidnapper. In a revenge movie, the actual revenge scene would be the best part, but this one just got me depressed after I turned off the DVD. It also made me feel like I wasted two hours.

In obligatory Asian Extreme Horror movie fashion, this ends with some weird scene which I guess is supposed to be open to interpretation and make the viewer think. I didn't find it weird though, I just didn't care. In fact, this just might be the one to turn me away from the whole asian extreme horror genre which is looking more and more repetitive and depressing rather than scary.

I guess the only scary thing about this is how it got all those glowing reviews and praise from the so-called asian horror fans.

Rating: 1/5 *
Watch this if you're too happy and want to become depressed.