This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

"Death Bell" is a South Korean high school horror movie released in 2008. It includes lots of slasher elements, a few minor mystery passages that can be seen as a nod to many popular Asian ghost movies but also several twisted enigmas that the surviving pupils and teachers have to resolve to save those who are kidnapped one by one by a vengeful mind. Imagine a mixture of the "Yeogo Goedam" series and "Saw".The problem I have with this movie is not that it doesn't introduce anything new to the genre. A solid high school slasher flick like "4th Period Mystery" can be quite entertaining without being innovative. This movie takes too much time to kick the story off. The first twenty minutes don't even introduce you adequately to the story. The real reasons behind what happens in this movie are shown later in a few rushed flashbacks. The opening minutes introduce you to many unimportant secondary characters.In fact, there are so many pupils running around that it's a little bit hard to realize who is who. After twenty lame minutes, pupils are suddenly kidnapped and murdered at such a high speed that you might soon feel confused about who is still alive, who has been kidnapped and who is about to be murdered.Then we have the enigmas. Each time a pupil is about to be tortured to death, a madman presents the surviving crowd an enigma they have to solve at time to save their kidnapped colleagues. Sometimes the survivors even solve the enigmas but that doesn't keep the killer from continuing his slaughter which is pretty lame as the challenges feel somewhat useless. No matter if you solve the enigmas or not, the killer continues to spread death and terror until the very end of the movie.The enigmas are also rather hard to follow. The first enigma has something to do with mathematics but the solution is never shown to the viewers. For the second enigma, the survivors have to create a sentence which is very hard to understand. I neither understand the sense behind the sentence nor the way the survivors manage to compose it in the end. The other enigmas are a little bit easier to understand but not very interesting as well. The movie should have spent some more time on explaining the enigmas and their more or less associated traps as it is the case in movies like "Mindhunters".The ending of the movie is rather intriguing and includes a minor twist. Some people felt disappointed by it, others thought it was great and to me it was just okay. At least, it ended this short movie on a rather high note.Fans of high school horror movies or slasher films can try this movie out. It's nothing groundbreaking but surely entertaining enough if you don't want to watch your "Scream" movies over and over again. It's decently entertaining but only an average horror movie, especially if we compare this to other unique and stunning South Korean horror movies like "A Tale Of Two Sisters", "Bedevilled" or "I Saw The Devil" for example. But for what it is, it's an acceptable fast food horror flicks with a few Korean pop stars acting in here.

Fast paced Korean high school spin on Saw. Students are kidnapped, set up in traps, and their classmates must answer questions to set them free. Simple set-up that requires a lot of generous suspension of disbelief by the audience. The killer becomes almost omniscient, and their technical skills are flawless. Still, if people didn't follow the rules we wouldn't have a film. The traps are pretty unsettling, and the story behind why this is going on manages to intrigue for the short running time. Also a critique on the competitive nature of education in South Korea, we see the students scores represented like sports scores. It knows when to build the suspense and when to relish in its gore, but the victims are simply that, and the twist is just too convenient.

This is more a slasher film where you count down who is going to be next on the list to be crossed off - it is formula driven. That being said, Death Bell has some very good moments and the middle half brings a lot of suspense and excitement and tension, though the plot gets a bit repetitive after that so you are simply waiting to find out who is the culprit.The plot is simple: a class full of high grade students are being held captive in their school. An anonymous person has told them they must answer all the questions he gives them or student by student will be killed.Of course, with Asian horror films, there is usually the usual cliché's - not to say that they won't work - because they usually do. This is no exception - you have your flashbacks, a tormented past and the reflections of adolescent school kids who often make the stupid choices while in stages of panic in their predicament - I guess that is universal.The choice of music in this film is a bit questioanble as it felt more like a high beat sort of atmosphere that doesn't work at times. The concept is interesting but at the same time the film feels more like a detective game rather than anything really scary - there are only a few moments which made me shudder - and it is mainly shock tactics that don't last for more than a few moments.Still, it is an entertaining ride. The final payoff at the end - I admit I didn't see it coming and it wasn't too bad. Think of this film like Battle Royale meets Saw.

For those of you who like Korean horror, and who doesn't these days, there is certainly no real shortage. And Korean horror seems to have perfected the balance between the supernatural and the psychological. And the two often go hand in hand. Death Bell is a slightly more genre take on this sort of horror. It also borrows heavily from western horror films, most notably the SAW series. I would imagine this "torture porn" is something Koreans don't get a lot of, while in the US, we're plenty used to it. So, it's hard to look at this film through the eyes of its intended audience. Even so, Death Bell is entertaining enough, but descends into territory that is both too familiar and too cliché, even by Asian horror standards.For the uninitiated, Death Bell tells the story of a group of top-notch students who have been chosen to study over their vacation in order to take a test and impress a sister school. The best students in the school are chosen, but it is to their unfortunate fate. Soon, a sadistic killer traps them in the school and starts kidnapping them one by one. Each kidnapped student is then threatened with a torturous death unless the rest of the students can solve the questions being given to them by the killer.Once the film starts going, it does very much resemble the formula of SAW. Person is taken and put in some kind of trap, other person has to solve some kind of problem to free trapped person, if not person is brutally killed. And Death Bell certainly does this end well enough. The traps aren't as creative as we have come to expect from SAW, but they are creative enough, ranging from a clothes dryer to a candle wax trap. They provide a good amount of tension and there is a pretty decent mix of Korean horror elements mixed in, most notably the presence of a supernatural force.The acting is very good, with Beom-su Lee of City of Violence fame doing a particularly good job. The directing is also quite good. First time director Yoon Hong-Seung does a good job at building tension and mystery, and it is an impressive debut that successfully melds traditional western slasher conventions with Korean horror elements. Production is of the highest quality here. However, despite these elements, it still remains a mostly passable effort.The thing that really brings this down is the script. It's cliché ridden, both for western horror and eastern. There's scary ghost girls, obvious twists, and the attempts at pulling at heart strings, even though you can't help but feel emotionally detached from these characters. It might simply be a cultural barrier, something we can't really understand in what is a truly horrible academia nightmare. Still, halfway through the film, you simply stop caring. It just isn't that interesting anymore. By the time you learn the truth, it's not surprising, nor that interesting. Part of that problem comes from an over-complication of the films story. Elements used are unnecessary. If the film had been kept to a simple, entertaining horror piece, it might have worked all the way through.I rated it the way I did because of this. Everything else was top notch, and there was even quite a bit of tension, mostly during the torture scenes. But once it starts getting complicated, then it fizzles. It could have been better, and Yoon shows great potential for a sophomore effort. I'll even say that this film was very impressive as a first. But on it's own, it's merely a one-night piece of entertainment.