Order by:

Add your comment

Do you want to let us know what you think? Just login, after which you will be redirected back here and you can leave your comments.

Comments 1 - 12 of 12

dondyarizona's avatar

dondyarizona

One hell of a creepy head scratching flick.
10 years ago
Zura's avatar

Zura

Beautiful colors and soundtrack.
12 years 11 months ago
Deusesque's avatar

Deusesque

Yeah and the music was beautiful
13 years 8 months ago
LordKinbote's avatar

LordKinbote

I don't see how you *couldn't* classify this under horror. Especially since it uses so many asian horror movie tropes (especially the girl slumped over with hair obscuring her face).

Very atmospheric.
11 years 8 months ago
ksatv's avatar

ksatv

It has some of the scariest scenes that it'll stick in your mind for a long time.
13 years 8 months ago
criscoJovan's avatar

criscoJovan

As with other Jee-woon Kim films, something is lacking - for A Tale of Two Sisters, the twists in the story are those that have long been exhausted and are presented in the same nature - making it just barely miss the mark.
But also like his others: visually stunning and a beautiful soundtrack.
11 years 2 months ago
Siskoid's avatar

Siskoid

Kim Jee-woon's A Tale of Two Sisters looks absolutely gorgeous - that almost goes without saying - and though it has a distracting twist (in that I'm not sure it entirely works), I think it survives it. It's a ghost story, and in this house where two sisters have a fraught relationship with their distant father and wicked stepmother, everyone's essentially a ghost. Characters co-exist without seeing/understanding each other. So it would almost work as a pure psychological drama, but there's something more going on under the surface (and other THAT surface), and the ultimate revelations decode the imagery in a most interesting way. There's something rather relatable to siblings in an emotionally hostile environment sticking together, but also needing to reinterpret their childhoods later, at least to my particular experience (which I understand isn't common, but hey, if director Kim is going to be making films just for me...).
2 years 4 months ago
CinemaDump's avatar

CinemaDump

Synopsis

Su-Mi (Su-jeong Lim) comes back home from a stay at a psychiatric ward along with her sister Su-Yeon (Geun-Young Moon). It becomes pretty clear that the two sisters have an extremely strained relationship with their step-mother (Jung-ah Yum) and in extension with their father (Kap-su Kim) as well. As tensions rise and strange happenings seem to be going on around the house, Su-Mi tries to keep Su-Yeon safe from the apparent abuse she receives from their stepmother.

Review

A Tale of Two Sisters hardly even feels like a horror movie when it begins. It's more of a drama before it starts adding a psychological twist. It keeps the drama element throughout and the movie is better for it. Kim Jee-woon has successfully made this an unsettling piece of horror that packs a real punch to the gut.

What I love about this film is the atmosphere that has been painstakingly crafted. The house that the story takes place in is a gorgeous set. When Su-Mi and Su-Yeon come in from the sunny wharf on their property, you instantly feel a climate shift. The house sure is nice but it's dark, shadow-filled and it seems to feature a million-and-one colourful patterns. From furniture to wallpaper, everything is patterned and it turns it into some kind of house from hell. I think that the over-decoratedness of the house is a reflection on the overbearing nature of the stepmother, but what do I know?

With this kind of atmosphere, it gives the director the opportunity to play some tricks on the viewer and Kim Jee-woon definitely does that. He'll do some unexpected stuff with the camera which just enhances the creepyness factor of the movie tenfold. There are some jump scares on occasion but they're very well built up and they don't feel like cheap throwaways. There are some genuinely scary moments that had me gripping my cushion pretty tight but this isn't a movie that will go down as one of the scariest movies of all time or anything like that. Its scope goes beyond that.

The story definitely falls into the complicated category but personally I love that. I like trying to wrap my head around stuff and trying to figure out what happened but I understand that it's not something for everyone. Kim Jee-woon who also wrote the screenplay doesn't just keep his card close to his chest. More like he cuts a thin slit into his chest and pushes the cards into the wound. If you're expecting something that is a straight freeway instead of a twisty road through the mountains, don't watch A Tale of Two Sisters. Watch the American remake, The Uninvited I guess.

With the big emotional family drama film that serves as the main backdrop to A Tale of Two Sisters, it's horror with a very grand scope. The payoff is worth the time invested and you get some more than decent scares throughout its 115 minute run time. The score is beautiful and there are many interesting visuals because of the eerie house set. I'll admit that I found myself reading the plot on Wikipedia a little while after having tried to puzzle it all out on my own but that's not an issue to me. I really like the story a lot and it's a movie that as a result has some pretty good re-watchable value.

Rating

7.5/10
9 years 6 months ago
Cippenham's avatar

Cippenham

Amended link to a new one, still not seen this myself so will try to do so as closing in on the Horror 500 Bronze|
10 years 9 months ago
roybaier's avatar

roybaier

Jung-ah Yum's perfomance was terrific.
11 years 2 months ago
Cynicus Rex's avatar

Cynicus Rex

The strength of Janghwa, Hongryeon lies in it's climax, not the crescendo. But my goodness what a climax it was.
8 months ago
Oneironaut's avatar

Oneironaut

I saw this one mentioned in a number of lists of good asian horror movies, but this isn't really a horror at all.

I can see how this one got the good reviews and all, but I watched it with different expectations that weren't met, so I didn't enjoy it. May give it another try at some stage.
12 years 2 months ago
View comments