Photo: Jung Bum-Sik and Jung Sik's Epitaph
Asian horror films' obsession with gaunt female ghouls and their face-obscuring stringy black hair persists in Epitaph, a Korean ghost story that alternates between being confusing and dim. As evidenced by their debut feature, director siblings Jung Bum-Sik and Jung Sik are assiduous students of J-horror tropes, as their saga about the spooky goings-on at a hospital in 1942 is chockablock with the usual scare tactics and some strange, squishy romantic undercurrents. In this intertwined three-part tale, a fledging doctor betrothed to the daughter of the hospital's director falls for a suicide victim's corpse, a gimpy physician attempts to psychologically heal a girl who lost her family in a car accident, and a brilliant neurosurgeon contends with a wife who has no shadow. Nick Schager
Asian horror films' obsession with gaunt female ghouls and their face-obscuring stringy black hair persists in Epitaph, a Korean ghost story that alternates between being confusing and dim. As evidenced by their debut feature, director siblings Jung Bum-Sik and Jung Sik are assiduous students of J-horror tropes, as their saga about the spooky goings-on at a hospital in 1942 is chockablock with the usual scare tactics and some strange, squishy romantic undercurrents. In this intertwined three-part tale, a fledging doctor betrothed to the daughter of the hospital's director falls for a suicide victim's corpse, a gimpy physician attempts to psychologically heal a girl who lost her family in a car accident, and a brilliant neurosurgeon contends with a wife who has no shadow. Nick Schager
