American and British metropolitan critics and cult film fans gave the instant Korean horror classic "
A Tale of Two Sisters" two big thumbs up as it was released to global audiences last weekend.
Comparing it to Hitchcock films and "The Shining" are the best compliments any filmmaker can hope for, and this movie also got a boost from recent breakthrough Asian horror films "The Ring" and "The Grudge".
The Western media defines Asian horror as ambiguous and psychologically challenging, praise over countless straight-forward teenage slasher flicks manufactured in Hollywood.
"A fractured nightmare in a damaged brain, this hauntingly neurotic film delivers the kind of psychological horror that American cinema forgot about decades ago", wrote BBC reviewer Jamie Russell,
Written and directed by
Kim Ji-woon, the film is about two sisters living with a detached father and wicked stepmother in the countryside.
Ghosts terrifying the girls complicate the family already on the verge of strangling each other.
The plot is told by an unreliable narrator in a mental hospital connected to the story; it's obvious she is exaggerating character roles and the setting, but for a good reason as the audiences discovers in the last minutes of the film.
"'
A Tale of Two Sisters' is a movie that cries out for post-film conversation", wrote Michael Booth of the Denver Post. Numerous Web chat rooms have already sprung up to discuss the film's surprise ending.
Along with "The
Doll Master" and "
Dead Friend - Ryeong (Ghost)", two local horror films which recently sold their rights to Miramax-Dimension, plus a handful of Korea gangster comedies, "Two Sisters" will be remade into an American version.
"Don't wait for Dreamworks to cast Jessica and Ashlee Simpson in the remake. Go see "
A Tale of Two Sisters" while it remains a Korean work of art", wrote Booth.
By Andrew Petty
"'Two Sisters' scares Western critics"
