Dark Forest of Death (2006)

Rating: 2/5

So they really dragged this movie out. Near the end they started getting fancy with the camera work and transitions (I guess transitions, not really sure what to call it) and it was just not a good move on their part. 

It's about 5 people who are going to the woods to climb (the girl keeps saying they are a climbing team, but there is no climbing done at all). Let's meet the team then, shall we:

Woo-Jin

Super strict big brother who is hard on Seung-Heon.

Jeong-Ah 

Woo-Jin's girlfriend and she is a medium (though Woo-Jin doesn't believe in that).

Jun-Hu

He's an alcoholic and loves the ladies with lonely hearts.

Seung-Heon

Shy and keeps to himself, Woo-Jin's younger brother.

Se-Eun

She wants to be a reporter and is very vain.

So when they get to entrance of the woods it's closed but Jun-Hu says there is a back way by the stone arches. A year ago there was a terrible forest fire so Woo-Jin thought the gate was closed but of course the alcoholic was right. They start their trek into the forest when they find stone pagodas. Se-Eun and Jun-Hu want to see if they can hit them with rocks but Jeong-Ah tells them not to and tells them to respect someone's last wishes. As soon as everyone else starts to walk away they throw rocks anyways which of course starts all their issues so it's these two assholes who are to blame. 

Soon after Se-Eun twists her ankle and they cannot continue the trek so they have to set up camp right where they are. They drink a little vodka that Jun-Hu brought along then send him to go get water. When he finds the water source he slips and smashes his head on the ground and starts bleeding, which when he gets up says "is embarrassing." When going to fill up the canister a face appears in the water and pulls him in to drown him. Jeong-Ah, being a medium and sensing others deaths, starts freaking out and tells Woo-Jin that she thinks Jun-Hu is in trouble. They get to the water and find the canister but no sign of Jun-Hu.

Back at the camp Seung-Heon is in his tent listening to music and Se-Eun is looking at what she has recorded thus far. While watching blood starts dripping from the top of her tent onto her and a shadow appears and that front starting to unzip her tent. She thinks it's a joke and starts calling out her friends names but when it opens she just starts screaming and is dragged out. Seung-Heon hears nothing.

Woo-Jin and Jeong-Ah return to the camp and begin looking for Seung-Heon who comes out of the bushes just in time. They ask where Se-Eun is and he says in her tent. Jeong-Ah goes to check but discovers it empty and picks up her camcorder, they watch it to see that her being dragged off was recorded. Seung-Heon wants to get the fuck out of there so they can find some proper help, but Woo-Jin says they're going to look for them first but he wants to go get help alone he can. He doesn't want to go alone so they all start walking through the woods screaming Se-Eun's name. 

Se-Eun wakes up in the dark by a tree to find a possessed (or possibly zombie) Jun-Hu with a knife coming for her, he repeatedly stabs her in her vagina until she dies. 

So Seung-Heon ends up getting separated from his brother and Jeong-Ah after they got in a fight about him being scared and walked off ahead, he gets his hand caught in a tree but somehow escapes and hides.

Woo-Jin and Jeong-Ah are looking for him but some power in the woods is preventing them from hearing Seung-Heon's screams. They end up finding Se-Eun covered in blood coming towards them and then some random guy with a shotgun and ax comes and shoots Se-Eun and whacks her in the head. They end up at his cabin and he tells them how he and his family came here and the same thing happened to them and he had to kill them and he started the forest fire. (In the flashback they show during the story the wife accidentally knocked over the stone pagodas while standing up from resting there).  Woo-Jin doesn't believe this and just calls him a murderer but the man continues to warn them not to bleed here or they will become like their friends. 

Woo-Jin knocks the guy in the face with the butt of the shotgun and the man spits blood on the ground which he is so pissed about because he didn't want to turn into one of them (he still had one more tie to cut from the spirt/human world).  

So they bail and end up finding Seung-Heon hiding behind a rock fixture and they start to book it for their car. They make it safely but too bad it won't start, someone fucked with the engine so they're stuck there. 

Long story short Seung-Heon ends up turning into a zombie, his brother can't bring himself to kill him so Jeong-Ah does. Seung-Heon ends up killing Jun-Hu with a molotov cocktail made out of the vodka bottle he left in the car. Woo-Jin believes it's over now and that they should be safe but Jeong-Ah has a vision that she will end up killing Woo-Jin but she can't deal with it so she decides to kill/sacrifice herself instead. She cuts her hand and lets the blood drip to the ground and tell Woo-Jin that it isn't over. She syphons gasoline into her mouth and pours it all around her. 

What I didn't mention in the beginning is that Woo-Jin is a smoker and Jeong-Ah wants him to quit. So in the back of the match book she writes him a message. So when it comes to burn her he rips out every match so he can read it before he does the deed.

 Sadly Netflix didn't translate it because they thought I learned how to read Korean by the end of the film. 

So this "seeing others deaths" is a curse. Jeong-Ah got it from her sister (her sister saw Jeong-Ah's death and couldn't handle it so she killed herself in a car crash). So now Woo-Jin can see what she saw. He picked of the family photo of axe guy and saw there was someone else on the trip, someone who took the picture, someone who got away; his last tie to cut. Woo-Jin goes over to the abandoned car and a girl slowly comes and, presumably, kills Woo-Jin.

The last 40 minutes of this movie could have been easily condensed into 15. They just dragged it out, and I really don't know why.