[Phantom Stranger]

Cinderella

No not the fairytale, a Korean Horror movie. This was a bit weird for me, but not necessarily in a bad way. The film is about a mother and her daughter, and various huntings/killings. The mother is a plastic surgeon, and all of her patients, particularly friends of her daughter, keep winding up dead and or mutilated due to the activity of said ghost.

The film does an decent job of having an atmosphere, but I can't say it ever had an outright creepy one, but it was a nice attempt. I think the lack of music throughout most of the film helps in this regard, but I never felt particularly in suspense. There are a couple of good moments that come close to achieving that tone, such as two girls carving each others faces up, and especially near the end when it becomes clear just how bat shit insane the mother is. With the revelation she abducted a missing child to replace her burn victim daughter, but when her biological child started to recover, she removed the face of the orphan for her own daughter. Afterwards, she keeps the orphan locked away in a basement, never to be seen or even known about by anyone else. The ghost is of course the orphan, who commits suicide earlier in the film.

But the intrigue is quickly swept under the rug by a big WTF ending, sadly. I really could not tell you what happens at the end, it's almost like they remembered they had to give it an ending. The mother goes to remove her daughter's face so she can "return it" to the now dead orphan. And...I think the mom just fucking dies for no apparent reason. She falls over and what's left of the movie is from her POV as a ghost talking to the orphan ghost and I have no idea WTF is going on. Roll credits.

Anyway, it's not a bad film, and it's worth a watch. But I don't think it's something I'd watch again. There's nothing here that pisses me off, no really unlikeable characters. But there isn't anything or anyone that sticks out either, most of the characters are just there. We never get to know any of the victims to feel emotional impact. We feel bad for the orphan of course, because she was treated horribly, but that's about the extent of being invested.