Review: Fear Eats the Seoul

My last review from Chicago Fear Fest this year is going to be for the last flick we saw at the festival: Fear Eats the Seoul. It's difficult to know where to start when reviewing a movie like this. Overall, I wasn't a huge fan of the film. I absolutely loved the opening sequence, and I was really excited from the first minute of movie, but after that, a lot of it let me down.

My primary struggle was with the pace of the film. The flick was about two hours in length, but you left the theater feeling as though the story really could have been cut down to about 70-80 minutes. Rarely do I find a horror or zombie film that has me checking my watch, but this one certainly did. That's not to say that there weren't some genuine moments of both tension and action--there were. Still, the gaps between these moments seemed a little languorous.

The majority of this problem might have stemmed from the fact that this film jumps back in time frequently to look at the characters before the outbreak. This could be a nice touch, and occasionally it is, but often it seems unnecessary. We don't usually learn anything important from the flashbacks, and I feel that many of the flashbacks didn't answer any questions for me or inform my understanding of the characters one bit.

Possibly, that's because I wasn't really invested in the characters. It was very difficult, as a 28 year old senior citizen, to sympathize with the characters in this story. The majority of the characters struck me as self absorbed, whiny, and without solid ideas or survival instinct. At times I found myself thinking, "Really? This is who makes it out?" As a result, I didn't care about their back story and I certainly didn't care if they made it out of Korea before it was bombed.

The main protagonist, Nadia (Amber Green), was my primary fish-to-be-fried. Her voice over was cliche, trite, and vastly lacking in maturity. She was moody and bitchy with other people, and not in a funny or relatable way, but rather in a "Dude, why haven't you people thrown her to the mutants?" sort of way. That being said, I'm absolutely sure that I would have adored both this movie and her character when I was seventeen. This flick would have been like my bible, and she would have been my idol. Thank the lords of Kobol that I'm no longer seventeen.

But the film wasn't all bad. First, you have to give the director, Nick Calder, some mad props for undertaking such an immensely challenging project and executing it completely and professionally at such a young age. I've certainly never been that dedicated to my craft. The film looks and feels more professional than you would expect, and for a very low budget, Calder has done some admirable work. In addition to being the director and writer, he's also the only mildly palatable actor in the whole movie. The effects on the infected (they're not...really...zombies. more like demons.) are really cool and original. They certainly strike a little bit of fear into the soul. And speaking of my horrible pun, I really dug the title of this flick. It was one of the main things that had me speeding up to Rosemont from C2E2 to watch it.

But aside from a few moments of "looking cool", an interesting base-level concept, and some original make up effects, this film is not destined to be a horror cult film for decades to come. The film is weighed down at many points by overly emotional writing, purposely shaky cinematography, slothful pacing, and unlikeable characters. All of these elements band together to make the audience disengaged and apathetic. Will they get out of Seoul? Will you care? Decide for yourself by watching Fear Eats the Seoul.

The trailer is below. Rewatching the trailer makes me rethink this entire review (the trailer is really good), but unfortunately the movie is not what the trailer advertizes. God, I wish it was. Maybe some very generous editing could recut the movie into a faster paced narrative. When that happens, someone call me.