Black House – Unrated (2007/Genius DVD)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Film: C

 

 

At first, Shin Terra’s Black House (2007) showed great promise and was shaping up as the best thriller I had seen from Korea since 301/302 (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and I was very impressed.  The story of an insurance executive still upset by the suicide of his sibling at a very young age is now handling similar cases.  After a bizarre phone call where he discusses too much about himself and points to a loophole in the contract, the line between suicide and homicide starts to decay.

 

Unfortunately, the screenplay decays first as this goes from a smart, intelligent thriller, to a showy, unfortunate implosion of a Horror film with a psychotic antagonist just starts to go over the top and runs out of steam, energy and ideas.  It could have become torture porn or just stupid, but it avoids that.  It simply breaks down into people attacking each other, which is a shame, because it was on a roll until then.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image had more plusses than minuses as there are some very clear shots, depth shots and consistent color for the color you get, despite other moments of softness.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 uses the channels well enough to be impressive and I wondered how good this would sound in DTS.  This should be interesting on Blu-ray.  Extras include deleted scenes, a making of featurette and production design featurette.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo