Half a star out of ****
I think I heard of "Sector 7" through Shout Factor earlier this year when they released it onto DVD and Blu-ray in the US. It's a Korean monster movie that I would have not seen let alone have taken notice of without the home video… More
Half a star out of ****
I think I heard of "Sector 7" through Shout Factor earlier this year when they released it onto DVD and Blu-ray in the US. It's a Korean monster movie that I would have not seen let alone have taken notice of without the home video distributers attached; I assumed it must be worth something. So as I watched it, you can probably guess my intense disappointment when I began to realize, at a relatively fast rate, that it really wasn't worth much at all. By the end, it was all but worth nothing. The experience reduces itself to just that before the last act. It's such a painfully derivative and dull-minded film that I almost don't want to call it one. And it's a disgrace to its country of origin, which has put out some great films in the past, present, and future; namely, in this department of monster movies, the wonderful "The Host".
So obviously, with that film existing, this is inexcusable. The story is set entirely on the oil rig that gives the film its title. The film opens with a worker submerged underwater in a suit, discovering a new aquatic life form when he accidentally breaks a part of the ocean floor with his foot. These life forms come in large groups, and one attacks him before the scene cuts to black. We're then introduced to a slew of characters - workers on the same rig - that are about as bland as the un-thrilling opener. The film attempts to develop them individually through romantic sub-plots and the like. For instance, there's a guy - with a fat lip given to him by one of the captured creatures, which spits this tentacle thing at his face - who wants to get with one of the female scientists on board, and she's uninterested. That's as far as that goes.
The film drags on with this pointless characterization that doesn't even work for about forty minutes until something seems to be very wrong. The lady scientist is found dead, and many other bodies follow hers. Soon, it's revealed that there's a monster on the loose. Maybe one of those little beasties evolved rapidly and escaped its tank. There's certainly a resemblance. The monster is tall, icky, slimy, and a product of corny special effects. It's like a fish with tentacles and a mouth that resembles a worm-like plant species that we might have seen in some other movie before this. Then again, we've seen everything here in some other movie before it.
A lot of it evokes Ridley Scott's "Alien". The merging of science fiction with horror, the isolated location, the stupid characters who get killed; the one thing that's truly different (aside from the fact that "Alien" is awesome and this is not) is the monster who will do the killing. It's certainly no xenomorph. It's over-designed and mostly uninteresting. It's also really hard to kill, but what isn't in horror movies these days? It poses the same kind of threat that any gross, tentacle-laden being would. That's as far as the filmmakers go into with the concept of the beast.
It's one thing to make a film that is thematically weak and uninspired; it's another thing entirely, on the other hand, to make a movie that probably doesn't even get to the level of themes or inspiration. For one thing, it has absolutely no visual style. Aside from the awful visual effects, the director - Kim Ji Hun - apparently doesn't know anything about lighting or composition. He knows the basic tricks of the camera, but since when should that give him the right to make a piece of shit like this? The worst scenes are without a doubt the special effects dependent ones - such as a motorcycle race on the rig (safety first, kids) - the dialogue dependent ones (believe me, this is bad writing at its worst), and the action set-ups. Everything feels awkward and hilariously contrived; and I wished the film had been at least good for shits and giggles, but not even. It's simply not possible to enjoy a movie this bad that takes itself completely seriously no matter what angle you look at it from. There are no surprises, and the only laughs I got were derived from the bad effects and writing on display. Fuck this shit. If I were you, I'd move on to the next sector and just forget all about 7.
