Face (2004)

I just took about 6 shots of Belvedere (vodka) while watching this movie. I'm on my 8th shot now...or 9th...I lost count. This is my first review while under the influence of alcohol...but I probably have better spelling and grammar than 95% of America.Anyway...the acting in this movie is fine. It's a foreign language to me so I can't truly tell if the acting is good or not but from body language and facial expressions, it's fine to me. As always, as I always say, it's a horror movie so there's not a lot of skill required to portray the roles.Atmosphere was also well done. I don't can't remember a scene where the music was off or the camera angles should've been better selected. The whole mood of the movie was well set and well-paced.The negative side of this movie is that I did not feel a lot of emotions. This movie was quite bland to me...or it could've been the six shots of Belvedere. Either way, I was emotionless throughout the movie. I DID feel for the young girl for having a bad heart...I'm not so cold-hearted.I'd skip this movie. For Asian horror, it sucked. Ringu still reigns champion in my book for Asian horror. That and Sick Nurses...those two movies are the epitome of Asian horror to me. I have a bunch of other movies to watch tonight...yes, I'm buzzing, but can't wait to see the other movies. Either that or I'm going to seriously reinstall my World of Warcraft and get some PvP points!!

A facial reconstructionist for the police department, having turned in his resignation due to stress and a sick daughter whose lost her smile, is receiving visitations(..as does his ailing daughter)by a dead woman's spirit urging him to pursue the face of a skull that will lead to the identity of a serial killer surgically removing hearts from young women for a doctor who doesn't question where the donated organs come from.A certain twist in "Face" is gonna take a leap in logic for folks to accept it. The film shows our hero, Lee Hyun-min (Hyeon-jun Shin), being plagued by a demanding ghost and an "assistant", Jung Sun-young (Yun-ah Song) motivating him to continue his work. He first believes his mission in finding the identity of a skull will lead to his daughter's health rejuvenating(..the film points out the possibility that the ghost will not let his daughter's heart function properly unless her killer is apprehended). When our facial reconstructionist desires to know the identity of the donor whose heart resides in his daughter, the master heart surgeon's resistance proves that there might be a corrupt means of obtaining these organs. Soon the surgeon is found hung by a noose and the whole film takes on an even greater hunt for the killer whose identity still remains unknown. An assistant shows up at our hero's door step claiming she's to help him put the face on a specific skull. When that skull isn't of the woman he was hoping, a vision leads him to yet another one, buried under sand, rotted partially. Whose identity of the skull this entails is yet another twist that'll have you going, "Huh?!" The whole film is really this building of a mystery..who is killing these poor girls, and who is the ghost haunting Hyun-min. The pay-off certainly is a stunner. Like I said, this twist might be a bit too much for some viewers to accept. I liked this film, myself. I thought it built the story along nicely, with a lot of heart behind such a grisly premise. Not that violent as you'd expect. Does work more as a hunt for a killer with Shin and Song working beautifully together on screen as we witness their characters' blossoming love for one another. And, I thought the film's following a facial reconstructionist was a great idea..it's rare that we get a film designed from this character's point-of-view. Too often it's the detectives and forensic teams, yet this film significantly focuses on the importance of a man who can put the face to a damaged skull. His role is even more important because the killer melts the bodies after removing the hearts. There's enough spooky ghost stuff(images of the female ghost pop up around Hyun-min as she appears in mirrors, her shadows on the floor, coming towards him, crawling on the ceiling, etc) to hold viewer's interest, I believe..that is what draws the audience into checking out the film and it's plot.

"Face" is a detective story/murder mystery with supernatural elements and a few of the images used in recent Japanese and Korean horror movies. The protagonist works with the police reconstruction the appearance of murder victims from fragmentary skeletal remains including a few recently that have had all the soft tissue burned away with acid.His daughter is recovering very slowly from a heart transplant and we see (but the characters don't) that some of the hearts available for transplant into patients with complications may have been harvested by other than ethical means

A father, traumatized by the illness of his daughter is asked to help the police reconstruct the face of yet another victim of a serial killer. Unable to cope he at first he refuses but visitations by the ghost of the victim and the need to find out where his daughters transplanted heart may have come from, he begins to try to give life to the dead.I really like this movie. Not really a horror film but more a drama with very strong supernatural overtones, Face has a few scares but is mostly a really good police drama. I know that many people expecting a balls to the wall fright fest have are disappointed but this quiet little film is a wonderful change of pace. Indeed the monsters here are human and the ghosts are merely victims. Those looking for something like Ju-On, Ringu or other overt horror films should look elsewhere since this isn't that sort of movie. More concerned with character and the mystery at hand, this is a really good change of pace. To its credit the film did make me jump three or four times, so there are some scares to be found, however more importantly this movie made me care about the characters and what was happening.There is little to quibble about, pretty much everything in this movie works, its only flaw being a confused time frame towards the end.See this movie. Just because its not a traditional horror movie doesn't mean that you shouldn't take the time to see it. Its simply a really good change of pace. 8 out of 10. Put it onto the list of must sees.