Guta-yubalja-deul (A Bloody Aria) (2006)

Critic Reviews

• Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

  A simply unpleasant experience.

• Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

  For the most part A Bloody Aria has an adept way of muddying these themes for audiences expecting the usual gore-thirsty trip.

• Neil Genzlinger, New York Times

  It may seem an odd thing to say about a film in which a baseball bat as an instrument of assault and rape is a recurring theme, but what makes A Bloody Aria a darkly delightful surprise is its restraint.

• Ed Gonzalez, Village Voice

  Half as amusing as that viral video of a sheep scaring its peeps while wearing a Halloween mask, A Bloody Aria is also less incisive.

• Wally Hammond, Time Out

  Still, Won pulls off a rare trick: to be funny and frightening while continuing to ratch the tension up and up. Performances, too, are top notch.

• Daniel Etherington, Film4

  A gripping, disconcerting and thought-provoking exercise that eschews graphic horror in favour of complex, darkly funny psychological drama.

• Wendy Ide, Times [UK]

  It's slow, bloody and pretty much devoid of merit.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  Time should surely now be called on the vogue in Korean cinema for black-comic ultraviolence.

• Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph

  Director Won Shin-yun infuses the moralisms with a pulpy energy that recalls cheery shockers such as Hostel and Saw, while also indulging in Three Stooges-style bumpkin-knockabout humour.

• Rob Daniel, Total Film

  Despite the title, A Bloody Aria is unlikely to be music to the ears of extreme cinema fans.

• Chris Hicks, Total Film

  Sore disappointment is in store for anyone expecting Won Shin-yun's revenge/psycho thriller to emerge as the new Oldboy.

• Patrick Peters, Empire Magazine

  Won's critique of the abuse of power in South Korean society lacks trenchancy, but he subverts convention with an incisiveness lacking in much transatlantic horror.

• Karl French, Financial Times

  It's supposedly an essay on the nature of human brutality and there is a certain amount of narrative deftness at play, but whether in the sequences of dialogue or violence, in both cases extended, the film is not merely unattractive but also uninteresting

• Robert Hanks, Independent

  I suspect it falls between two stools: not nearly grisly enough for the aficionado of extreme Asian cinema, rather too grisly for everyone else.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  It all looks like Michael Haneke-lite but, as a comment upon the fact that people tamed by violence tend to promote it when given half a chance, it has its grimly amusing merits.

• Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

  Korean filmmaker Won uses a startlingly in-your-face style for this outrageous examination of bullying at all kinds of levels. Both unsettling and entertaining, it also finds real terror and black humour in the least likely places.

• Anton Bitel, Eye for Film

  although the degeneration of events from bad to worse is made unbearably tense, Won also peppers his film with black humour, without ever abandoning his allegiance to social commentary.

• Austin Kennedy, Sin Magazine

  It would have been fine but the acting is pretty over the top, making scenes almost laughable.

• Don Willmott, Filmcritic.com

  will ultimately confound American audiences who don't appreciate the complexities of the Korean national psyche

• Rob Humanick, Slant Magazine

  The film isn't illuminating, just inflammatory.

Read all 20 critic reviews