"Muoi" - Film review

"Muoi is a horror movie that the Vietnamese and Korean cooperated, first released in 2007. "Muoi" is the story of a Korean novelist who wants to complete her second horrow novel about the real story of "Muoi", a century-old vengeful spirit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WECH0Of96Pg
The film's trailer

Throughout 93 minutes, the audiences can be able to feel the creepy tension created in the film and also passively can be able to visit both of the countries: South Korea and Vietnam. However, most of the scenes in the movie take place in scenic locations of Vietnam like Da Lat, Hoi An, My Son, among which Hoi An and My Son are world heritages claimed by UNESCO.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0937231/#comment
The film's review

The trailer is great, provoking the curiousity of the audiences through the creation of scary tension. From lovehallielove on Youtube "this looks awesome!!cant wait 2 watch". The trailer is really a success from the producers that can really get the attention from the audiences. The success from trailer can bring the success to the film at its first stage. As the audiences know about the film, they will wait untill it's realeased. However, the actual film did not satisfy the audiences. Many audiences, included myself, was left inside our mind a "hung up" feeling after had watched the film. This is beacause the film was not that scary at all, compared to the trailer. From djepic112 on Youtube: "Again, this trailer is very beautiful and MUCH MUCH more interesting than the actual filmThe Vietnamese song they play is very beautiful and scary. The female voice calling out to the child is saying, "my child, please come here. It's your mother."Imagine if this film was about a spirit that kills children. Also, the burning corpse at the beginning was great.Shame that the real "Muoi" film is pretty bland. The typical cliche Korean horror storyline is not that interesting. " and "It is a South Korean film but the reason why it was able to obtain a semi-authentic Vietnamese feel/vibe was due to the co-production with Phuoc Sang Entertainment. Other Korean films that had anything to do with Vietnam were pretty bad. The "Vietnamese" people were actually Koreans who couldn't speak Viet.At least in Muoi, this is kept to a minimum. The Vietnamese characters are kept to a minimum even though they are easily the most interesting characters.".

The film is therefore, not as good as it supposed to be in the trailer. However, the film reveals the tradition style of Asian horror movies compared to the Western or the American ones. They appear to be more unrealistic and they always show the different beliefs in different culture between Asians and Westerns/Americans. If the Westerns/Americans mostly show their beliefs in series killer with weapons, the Asians show their beliefs in spirit, souls of dead people who always want to revenge because of their horrible, unfair previous lives.

Preliminary Project

Made by: Thach, Leo, Marco, Holly and Anna


In order to facilitate the shoot, we had lessons on learning the cameras, preparing for a camera, communication during a shoot and we did have a practical lesson on shooting a scene applying the 180 degree law. Therefore, minutes before the shooting, we actually got used with the cameras and other basic requirements for a shoot such as: communication, setting up, story board... We were also divided into small groups of 3 or 4.
The story board was already designed for us, including the script. All we needed to do was choosing an appropriate content to the script and the shooting part. We were also prepared a full pack of camera, tripod and tape to serve for the shooting.
Due to the fact that there was not plenty of time to prepare, we came up with limit idea to satisfy with the script and the story board. Despite the lack of time, at the end, our group all decided to choose the most appropriate content and after that, everything went pretty well. However, if we had some more time to prepare and to shoot, we could have been able to shoot better scenes, the actors would have had more time to learn and feel the expression from the script and better ideas could have had came up to make the shoot more interesting and attractive. Nevertheless, we were all satisfied to what we had done.
What we did was shooting a sequence of shoots from a given story board. There were 4 persons in my group, 3 boys and 1 girl. After choosing the right content which was meant to be appropriate to the given script, we then decided that 2 persons took the acting bit, 1 boy and 1 girl. The rest would take the director part and the camera man. My role was to be a director. I think I did pretty well as a director. At first, I did not get used with speaking out “Stand by” or “Rolling”. However, as the shoot went on, I gradually got used with it and be confident in saying that. We decided to shoot the whole story board in 4 ways: wide shot, close up of the first character and the second character, over shoulder of the first and the second character. This means that for the whole story, we had to shoot 4 different times at 4 different shoot angles. Everything went quite well. The communication between the groups was clear. People understood each other. Thanks to that, the production stage went quite well and fast that we had more time to get on with some extra angle shootings such as: eye-line of the first character to the other one and opposite and the low-angle shooting...
Even though we did quite well during the production, we were unprofessional in some ways. Sometimes, we had to shoot again because the actors forgot their script. However, this was caused due to the lack of time. Sometimes, the camera man did forget to bubble and I, a director, sometimes did not know what to direct the actors on how they could express themselves more in order to show their professionalism. On the other, I think that as new people in the making film production stage, we did quite well.
I could understand more about the 180 degree rule and apply it on the right way. I also knew how to be a director. Now, I am able to communicate with people during the shooting confidently and had some experiences in using a camera. Also, in a film production, I learnt more about the importance of a story board. I did not only help the director to follow the production easily, it did help other people such camera man and actors to follow the stage of production. It clarified for us where we were, what we had done and what we were going to do. From that, the time taken for the production is shortened and therefore, we had more time to do more productive stuffs. However, compared to the other groups', I think that our video is less interesting as the works on the camera and angles need to work on more. The video could've been better if we worked on more about zooming, focusing of the TV for example or about blurring and sound effects of relative props in the video.