Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at another Asian horror film sweeping the festival circuit called R-POINT. Now, the majority of the reviews we've gotten have been favorable and this one is no exception. I saw this film at the American Film Market last year and I felt it was bland and mediocre, never taking full advantage of the horror of the scenario. Although I have to love the stereotypical American soldiers who pop up and deliver dialog like they were in a porno movie. That made me smile. Anyway, for a different opinion read the below! Enjoy!

The Seattle Film Festival is coming towards its end but you'd never know it by the size of the lines. We were still wrapped a quarter of the way around the block and energy drinks were being distributed to any and all takers. The crowd wasn't as big as it had been for Marebito or a number of other highly anticipated movies but the theater was by no means empty when the movie started at midnight.

The film in question is R-Point, an interesting sounding movie of which I knew only as much as the festival's promo said, "Korean soldiers searching for a missing platoon in 1972 Vietnam end up encountering forces that basic training never prepared them for." It made me think of Dog Soldiers which in turn made me want to go see it. I was wrong. The only thing Dog Soldiers and R-Point have in common are soldiers, after that the similarities end.

The movie opens shortly after what appears to be some bad shit has gone down. A mutilated man is being questioned about the location of his troops because despite his claims that they are all dead, they're still broadcasting a distress call. Recruiting a ragtag group of soldiers, the army organizes a seven day mission to go find the other troops and bring back whatever they find. The soldiers are promised that 3 days after they return they will be flown back home to visit their families, with this promise it's not hard to find volunteers and they make their way to a location known as R-Point. R-Point is a non-combat zone simply because for some reason there is no Viet Cong presence in the area. In fact there is absolutely no presence whatsoever. Heading up the squad is a Lieutenant who is renown for shedding blood on the battlefield, so much so that all the soldiers think he's a total psychopath. He is the epitome of the tortured leader but more than enough of a hard ass to keep it together and he makes one hell of a POV character for a majority of the film, the acting in this is top notch. I'm not going to delve to deeply into what they find in R-Point because this is one of those movies that you'll really appreciate going into bare but suffice to say there are ghosts and by the time the movie lets out anyone considering joining the army may have second thoughts.

R-Point does not go in for the cheap thrills, more than anything this film is about the buildup and setting. It has been likened to the feel of Apocalypse Now and while I wouldn't go quite that far, the same saturated feeling of hostile jungle is definitely present. The first time the squad walks out into an open plain I was waiting for bullets to leap out from the trees and cut them down. The entire film maintains that trend. The moment they reach R-Point every inch of field, every deep patch of grass, every statue is completely hostile and when you watch a squad of soldiers duck into the grass and simply disappear you realize that our protagonists are well and truly fucked.

The film contains a number of flashbacks and within those lay what I found to be the only notable flaw to the movie. Some of the flashbacks are not particularly well tied in or raise questions that are never answered. It is one of two reasons that I want to find an import, firstly I want to see if anything was cut out in this version, the other reason is that this movie weaves a tight thread. Little things that seem of little consequence early on would stand out like a sore thumb wreathed in flame later on in the film.

I'm glad I got out to see this flick. Asian horror is still leaps and bounds ahead of pretty much anything we're producing here in the states and even with the use of ghosts (which I'm sure more than one person is getting tired of), R-Point is fresh and frightening enough to stand proudly on its own.

-Jabriel Donohue