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South Korea has witnessed a noticeable revival in recent times in their K-Horror canon. Following on from the emergence of a slew of smart, intelligent, and imaginative films these genre horrors have led the way toward distinguishing Korean horror from other New Asian regions and marking itself out as a serious cinematic force with which to be reckoned. In the wake of the highly influential footsteps of the late great melodramatic Korean horror maestro Kim Ki-Young (responsible for such staples of the genre as ‘The Insect Woman’, 1972 and ‘Killer Butterfly’, 1978), K-Horror has, in the last decade, thrived considerably. From a faintly comical reinvented return to the monster movie with Bong Joon-ho’s ‘The Host’ (2006), to a persuasive answer to Vietnam set horrors felt in Kong Su-chang’s ‘R-Point’ (2004) and a series of ghost stories that have presented their own distinctive set of complex idiosyncrasies to sit alongside modern J-Horror and Hong Kong horror classics with the persuasive social commentary shockers ‘Whispering Corridors’ (1998), Ji-woon Kim’s terrifying debut ‘The Quiet Family’ (1998) and the more recent ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ (2003) not to mention Ahu Byeong-ki’s more traditional but no less impressive coupling of ‘Phone’ (2002) and ‘APT’ (2006). First time director Chang-jae Lim’s ‘Unborn but Forgotten’ (2002) sits within the latter category of would-be haunting spinechillers. But, although nurturing an impressively glossy and brooding aesthetic that is used to re-work traditional Asian fears of the return of the repressed, (suitably updated to accommodate cyber-space technology) ‘Unborn but Forgotten’ is ultimately an unpersuasive and turgid example of the sub-genre that regurgitates more than it re-invents.
Released in the midst of Japan’s highly influential ‘Ring’ (1998) and ‘The Grudge’ (2003) cycle, ‘Unborn but Forgotten’ concerns the investigative exploits of photo-journalist and documentary filmmaker Su-jin Han (played by the tragically late Korean actress Eun-ju Lee). Su-jin is exploring a strange series of bizarre womb deaths linked to the viewing of a sacred maternity clinic website known as ‘White Room’. With the help of investigating cyber cop Lee Seok (Jun-ho Jeong) Su-jin soon learns that after viewing the site ‘pregnant’ victims witness premonitions of their own deaths in which they have 15 days to live. The curse kills the infected women by the sudden swelling of their uteruses, which crush their internal organs through an aggressive and accelerated form of pregnancy. Su-jin also discovers that after logging into the site herself that she too experiences strange hallucinatory visions of an unborn baby and a nightmarish premonition that supposedly signals her own unfortunate embroilment within the cyber curse.
If all this sounds bogusly familiar that is because it is unashamedly indicative of the plot from Hideo Nakata’s highly influential original hit film ‘Ring’ - but substituting the video nasty for cyber-space terror tactics. However, in other ways it is also indicative of Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s equally taut supernatural creeper ‘Kairo’ (2001, re-titled ‘Pulse’ for international and eventual remake release). In ‘Pulse’ a website similarly opens up a portal for the undead supernatural forces to inhabit that spills into and infects the real world. But where Kurosawa (no relation to the great master Akira) managed to evoke a palpable sense of all-encompassing fear through clever use of claustrophobic and acrophobic geographical interior and exterior spaces, Chang’s ‘Unborn But Forgotten’ is ultimately let down by an unoriginal nurturing of overly flashy and familiar audio/visual motifs of the horror genre that utilise overworked and repetitive trick-photography to wanton effect.
Taking up holdings in the desolate apartment of one of the former murder victims, Su-jin begins to feel the presence of strange supernatural aspirations. Among these is a spreading damp pattern on the living room ceiling (evoking Hideo Nakata’s ‘Dark Water’ 2002) that springs to life in the form of a yelping baby, along with the disquieting sight of a set of pale seemingly disembodied feet that suddenly appear beneath a veiled table. There is also the creaking of a door opening in the bathroom, (seen in recorded playback) which suggests that a certain someone may be watching her in the shadows.
One may be able to forgive these clichéd cinematic prank tactics if it were not for need of a more involving narrative progression and satisfying conclusion. But in this case ‘Unborn but Forgotten’ presents us with half-hearted twist ‘revelations’ to justify the ghostly goings-on. If this were not enough there is virtually no effort to invest in any emotional depth with the characters. You would think with such a central and predestined ‘terminal’ character such as Su-jin Han, that the filmmakers would encourage some closer audience identification with her emotional turmoil. However, her character is given so little opportunity to develop that you are simply left to follow her on her laborious investigative journey - as she seeks out abandoned spooky lofts and digs up further random clues to the motivation toward the killings - with little or no emotional insight. One of the more memorable but utterly wasted scenes in ‘Unborn but Forgotten’ features Su-jin uncovering a baby shrine in the loft of the murdered girl’s apartment. Lit luridly through the natural beams emitting from her torch we are ushered into the confined domain where a creepy rendition of a children’s lullaby is hummed ominously. From the build-up you might expect some sort of visual fright fest and perhaps some haunting pathos to link with the horrific crimes, however the scene lacks any real insight or tangible scares and ends up – with its nest of children’s dolls and uncovered rioting baby corpse – just a lame reincarnation of better directed Asian shockers.
The final reel revelation is equally predictable for any Asian horror film devotees (or even for anyone who has viewed a handful of the recent J-horror output). We discover that Su-jin’s own bed-hopping TV producer boyfriend is behind the pregnancy crimes and that - in a half-hearted attempt to avoid losing his career - murdered his pregnant former mistress to destroy any connections with an illegitimate child. And thus Su-jin is marked as his latest victim, orchestrated in a violent showdown between the two that climaxes with the rapid unborn ‘fantasy birth’ of her baby and the killing of the murderer by a last-minute Jun-ho Jeong. A final scene in monochromic black and white teases the viewer into suggesting that the baby (or her spirit) has manifested into a grown-up little child.
So, what is there to be learnt from this regurgitation of Asian horror visual iconographies and narrative motifs? The region has an overlapping penchant for representing vengeful supernatural forces who take the form of predominantly lank-haired pale-faced entities, which stem from the common Asian belief that the spirit of the dead co-exist with the living. But with so many similar Asian hauntings seeping on to the market, these films have crowded together to form repeating riffs on one another, with the cycle subsequently caught in an endless rendition of hearty sequels, spin-offs, and eventually redundant American remakes. If there is a cinematic regional identity at work here it is in danger of being squashed by the relentless force of generalisation and certainly a film like ‘Unborn but Forgotten’, with its borrowings and reworkings of the genre, does not help to distinguish matters. If anything, it reinforces an identity crisis that is caught within its own regurgitating loop - establishing a horror hybrid of multi-regional sensibilities.
Country: South Korea
Budget:
Length: 95mins
Filmography:
‘Dark Water’, 2002, Hideo Nakata, Honogurai mizu no Soko kara Seisaku Iinkai
‘Kairo’, 2001, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Daiei Eiga
‘The Grudge’, 2004, Takashi Shimizu, Senator International
'Ring’, 1998, Hideo Nakata, Omega Project
‘APT’, 2006, Byeong-ki Ahn, Toilet Pictures
‘Phone’, 2002, Byeong-ki Ahn, Toilet Pictures
‘The Quiet Family’, 1998, Ji-woon Kim, Myung Film Company Ltd.
‘Whispering Corridors’, 1998, Ki-hyeong Park,
‘R-Point’, 2004, Su-chang Kong, CN Film
‘Killer Butterfly’, 1978, Ki-young Kim, Kuk Dong
'The Insect Woman’, 1972, Ki-young Kim, Hanrim Films
Pub/2008
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The Backwoods, 2007, directed by Koldo Serra