I got around to watching
A Tale of Two Sisters, a 2003 Korean horror film which had caught my attention for being on so many Asian horror move 'best-of" lists. While it wasn't a bad movie, I wouldn't include it among my favorite Asian horror films. The problem is it is derivative of other films. It is about twin teenage girls who move back into their childhood home where their cruel stepmother (is there any other kind of stepmother?) now lives. After the move, strange things begin to happen in the house. This is a nicely mounted production and not a low budget affair, it is well acted, scripted, and filmed. The direction and editing and not rushed, and it is well paced and confidently shot. The camera angles and color compositions reflect a very sure hand from the director Kim Jee-woon. I will have to grant that A Tale of Two Sisters did have a couple of scary moments. However there is a fairly derivative element which diminished the movie for me which I will discuss below the spoilers alert...
SPOILERS BELOW...
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This movie had an 'imaginary' character too many. It almost becomes the movie which Charlie Kaufman's 'Adaptation' parodies with the concept of 'The Three'. Ultimately it ended up feeling arbitrary and only tried to pull the rug out from under the audience simply for the sake of a surprise. This movie reduces the narrative trick of undermining the audience assumption about the solidity of a character, a la The Sixth Sense or The Fight Club, to a kind of banality. In the end this movie felt like it was built out of components from other successful movies and thus lacked originality. A Tale of Two Sisters is so slickly made that I can see how it gets away with that and ends up on so many 'best-of' lists, but for me this re-tread aspect reduces the movie to simply being passable. Take the typical long-haired women ghosts of Japanese horror and combine them with Fight Club style alter egos, and you have a Tale of Two Sisters. It's well-made, yes, but it is still just an imitation of other movies, and it can not escape this sense of being a 'second-hand' story.