| Epitaph (The Last Breath) | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Hangul | 기담 |
| Hanja | 奇談 |
| RR | Gidam |
| Directed by | Jung Sik Jung Beom-sik |
| Starring | Jin Ku Kim Tae-woo Kim Bo-kyeong Ko Joo-yeon |
| Release date(s) |  August 1,
2007 |
| Running time | 98 minutes |
| Language | Korean |
Epitaph (기담/奇談 - Gidam) is a 2007 South Korean film directed by brothers Jung Sik and Jung Beom-sik. The movie is a horror film set in 1942, while South Korea was under the colonial rule of Japan. It is framed by scenes set in 1979.
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Dr. Jung Nam finds a photo album dating back to his days as an intern at the Ansaeng Hospital. He thinks back to those days where part of his soul died. In 1942, as a young medical intern, Jung-Nam's arranged marriage ends when his fiancee (whom he has never met) commits suicide. Later he is assigned to monitor the morgue late at night. There he falls in love with a corpse, that turns out to be his deceased fiancee. Soon other mysterious events take place in the hospital, involving a young girl haunted by ghosts and a serial killer targeting Japanese soldiers.
Whilst "Epitaph" has not been widely reviewed in English-speaking press, the few critics who lent their pens to it express the almost uniform impression that the film has a certain derivative feel to it, incorporating numerous formulaic genre tactics from more famous films such as the Diassociative Identity Disorder plot-twist in "A Tale of Two Sisters"[1] and the three-episode structure from "Three Extremes" and other similar examples; Slant Magazine reviewer Nick Schager comes to the dramatic conclusion that the genre "cannibalizes itself until there's nothing left except the tattered remains of once-effective conventions and the rapidly fading memories of superior scares gone by."[2] Schager also calls attention to the convoluted plot, in his words characterised by "jumbled chronology, dull repetitions, corny otherworldly melodrama".
Nonetheless, the cinematography, directing and acting by K-Horror mainstays Kim Eung-su and Ye Soo-jeong have earned the film praise as "visually as well as intellectually impressive, with some gorgeous cinematography and wonderfully composed shots"[3] and "a significant contribution to rehabilitating K-horror's international reputation"[1].
The site has not yet accrued enough reviews for a rating at either RottenTomatoes.com or Metacritic.
The film's production designers, Min-bok Lee and Yu-jeong Kim, were nominated for a 2008 Asian Film Award for the work in "Epitaph", although the award eventually went to "The Sun Also Rises".
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   | Slant Magazine review - Epitaph | Film Review | Slant Magazine |
| | KoreanFilm.org review - Korean Movie Reviews for 2007 |
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