Days of Halloween Redux: Sector 7

2011, Ji-hoon Kim -- download

I was trying to consider how this movie could be so bad, yet generate even some positive press on the internet.  The only thing I could come up with is that it fits in the same place as those straight-to-SyFy-Channel movies, being intentionally bad or produced by directors so oblivious to their lack of skill, they don't hold anything back.  This is a monster movie obviously inspired by The Host, the brilliant Korean movie about a monster that appears after a toxic spill.  But that there is an environmental connection and there is a monster is where the comparison ends.  This isn't quaintly bad, its just plain terrible!


We are on an oil rig somewhere off the coast of South Korea where a crew of drillers is desperately trying to find oil and being constantly disappointed.  Its a motley crew with inexperienced youths, over zealous corporate types, typical seasoned roughnecks and an atypical geologist, beautiful and bold amongst all these tough men.  At least I think she was a geologist; I have to admit that any subtlety in language translation was lost in these utterly horrible subtitles where sometimes my brain had to do back flips to know what the translator meant.  This was chinatown-special caliber sub-titling.  But even that did not explain how terrible the movie was.


It was a grab bag of all monster movies that take place in dark, shadowy places as well as on the sea.  I saw misplaced elements inspired by The Abyss, Treat Williams' Deep Rising, the Alien franchise and of course, The Host.  It had a very loose, barely held together, plot about the oil riggers desperate to find oil and having to deal with a monster that rose from the sea bed.  Or did it?  Or was it created? I don't know.  There are a few scenes or so about a lab and broken jars and experiments on cute jellyfish that could also be the world's next fuel source.  But mostly it is about running away from a slimey alien monster that is part wounded sea lion, part The Host monster, part every other alien creature that seems built from the DNA of other creatures.  And yet, even when they get caught, most of the time its ever-regenerating tongue appendage just wraps around an ankle and swings them wildly about.  There are a few off camera deaths and even fewer on camera. The monster just doesn't seem that interested in eating them, despite its billion teeth.

I honestly could not tell whether the acting was bad or not, as the combination of astoundingly bad subtitles with typical overdone Korean melodrama left me in the dark.  But it would be hard to tell for the audience in Korea, I believe, as it is just so many random scenes strung together!  Motor cycles on the deck! Cute jellyfish things that sting people! Stings are just.... stings?!?! Skeet shooting!  Scientist doing experiments! Everything is in the dark!  Turn on the lights! Crush the monster! Light it on fire because its blood is fuel! Monster doesn't seem to mind being lit on fire! Uncle betrayal! Random loss of roughnecks! Captain betrayal!  Monster falls overboard, monsters is back onboard, monster dives overboard, monster is onboard!  Monster wanders hallways, monster hides under hallways, monster doesn't hide at all.  WTF is not strong enough TLA to elaborate on what was going on.

In the oil rig blows up (why does it have a self destruct?!?!?!) never having really discovered any oil, but at the end we are shown  many many oil rigs.  Not sure if it was because they needed oil rigs to capture cute pollywog glow fish new fuel source creatures or that there was oil there after all.  Again, did I miss something in the terrible subtitles?  I doubt it.  I highly doubt it.

P.S.S. To address the poster, "Who will survive?" Of course, its the person in the forefront.  D'Uhhhhh.  Besides, she is cute.