Death Bell – Review

Post

1 comment Dec 7, 2009  |   Posted by in Asian Horror Reviews

Home  \  Death Bell – Review

The story of Death Bell is a mix of various movies, with Saw being the more prominent for me, just without all the excess gore and lengthy torture.  The film is set at Chang Ahn High School, where a special class of the top twenty students has been put together for the coming exams. A disembodied voice announces a student will die for every test question the class gets wrong — and the first will be the girl in the tank (seen below). Anyone trying to leave the premises will also die a horrible death.  Yes, the movie takes a Saw-ish turn as we witness one student after the other somehow get kidnapped and put in front of a camera with some new death-device. Aside from the identity crises, the movie was fairly decent.

After a fairly conventional half-hour setup, the pic keeps the tension high with tight cutting and a no-flab script that ups the student body count in some especially inventive ways. Thankfully, the film is packed with shocks, and whilst most of them are fairly familiar, there are a few genuine surprises and some imaginative scenes with some good use of special effects. The film starts off as a ghost flick, which turns into a semi-torture feature and ends up as a standard who-done-it slasher.

But it’s a horror film. Build some decent atmosphere, give me some good acting, and I’ll go home happy. One death in particular had me yearning for the keyboard right away.  A student is wedged in what seems to be a mattress wire frame.  Above him are burning candles.  I thought maybe the candles were holding up spikes and that their diminishing height would bring his impalement.  Nope, just wax.  Wax that covered his mouth, suffocating him. Pretty cool stuff. The identity of the killer and his reasons might be fairly predictable, but then again, this is a film that primarily relies on inventive shocks, outrageous gore and slick cinematography.

None of the students is equipped to handle the life-or-death tension created by this exam.  The characters themselves are typical and they make the same boneheaded decisions that everyone does in horror flicks. As bloody bodies start dropping through ceilings, banging around in clothes dryers, and showing up with cryptic messages carved into them, the group members behave badly, suspecting each other and narrowing their perspectives. If watching someone die drowning in melted candle wax is your thing, this is a good asian horror movie to put on your radar.



Related Posts with Thumbnails

  • http://www.clicheanime.wordpress.com finalanimestop

    I don’t mean to use your comment box to say this, but this is a matter of life and death for my anime-blogging career and my following @ finallyanime.com Please don’t delete this comment.

    Hey, it’s me FaS, from Finally Anime. I had to use a different name because MY WEBHOST SHUT ME DOWN!!!!! They fucking shut me down!!! Apparently I’ve been taking too much of their bandwidth/processes. This is what they said:

    “As you probably aware, here at Just Host we proactively monitor all our servers
    to ensure that our clients websites are loading as fast as possible at all
    times. During this routine monitoring we
    have found that your account is utilizing an excessive amount of system
    resources, and we have been forced to suspend your site as per our terms and
    conditions ‘10% CPU Policy’

    For your reference, here is a copy of your usage report:

    Top Process %CPU 82.0 [php]
    Top Process %CPU 72.0 [php]
    Top Process %CPU 54.0 /usr/bin/php /home/finally1/public_html/index.php

    Just Host offer unlimited hosting space and unlimited bandwidth, but as per our
    terms we will suspend any website which exceeds our 10% CPU policy. We hope that
    you understand our position in
    ensuring that we provide the best possible service. In order to continue to
    provide this high quality service, you will need to upgrade to a dedicated
    server, which will give you an abundance of
    additional resources and speed up your website.”

    Get this, they didn’t even let me get my material!!! This is what I sent them:

    You know, I don’t get irritated very much, but why would you do such a thing like this without any warning. I’ve been a loyal customer and you shut down my site without ANY warning?! Like I’ve worked SO hard on my site and you do me like that. I almost want to create a lawsuit. I am not made of money and simply cannot afford that. That’s just Ludacris. 143 a month????? If you would please put my website back on for at least a day or two or even half a week I’ll pay extra, I don’t care, but you don’t seem to understand that I need to let my audience know what’s going on…however you just cut me off…I apologize in advance for the flaming email, but you’re destroying everything I worked so hard for….all the important anime directories will now have dead links….and worse, important other anime bloggers. You’re killing me literally. As someone in need, ID VERY much appreciate if you put it back up for at least 2-3 days. You never even warned me. HOW was I supposed to know this??? Really?? At any rate, I eagerly await your reply.

    Anyways, to make a long story short, if you could make a short post that tells people Just.Host.com SUCKS and not to use them and that finallyanime.com is shutdown, I’d appreciate it.

    Thanks for being a cool fellow blogger.

    *For now, I’ll be posting @ ganbatte.kokidokom.net/*




Newest Articles



Ep. 4 ◙ May 02, 2012
Listen NOW | Download

Categories