Touted as being a great movie that is sure to be under-appreciated, a movie-buff that I know insisted that I see this movie. And so I did.

This Korean feature film starts off with a scientist draining bottles and bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, which later empties into the Han river. Up to this part is apparently a true story. What comes after is somewhat to be imagined upon.

The story essentially revolves around the happenings of one family as they struggle to overcome the loss of their youngest member of the family, whom was taken by the monster of Han river. Although the movie had its good parts, overall I was a little disappointed in the outcome. Granted this could have been because of all the hype I was confronted with for this movie. Roger and Ebert even gave it thumbs up.

Admittedly, the direction was really well done, as was the cinematography. I especially liked how the director manages to capture the emotions of the actors during the action sequences that turned to slow-motion with the orchestra playing in the backdrop. A classic way to bring out more emphasis to what is going on.

My favourite scene has to be when the father turns around to see that he is no longer holding the hand of his daughter. He looks back only to find his daughter getting up slowly from the ground. As she gets up, you can see the monster coming in the background approaching right behind her. She cleans herself as she gets up, not knowing what all the chaos is about. As she turns around she gets swept away by the tail of the monster.

Afterwards, I have to say things got a little carried away. Take the scene in the gymnasium for example. When the entire family comes to morn the death of the daughter, they roll around on the ground as if in seizure, sobbing and yelling out loud. It’s almost as if they thought they were in some kind of comedy trying to act as comical as they can.

Scenes like that just didn’t seem to fit the overall feel of the movie. And there were more. It just didn’t add up, which I thought was strange for a movie that I was expecting to be a purely science-fiction thriller type. I was wrong. While it was a thriller, some parts just seemed a little more like a B-rated thriller.

Some scenes lacked coherence as one scene seemed to just jump into the next as if we were supposed to imagine what happened in between. Was this a lack in the editing department or simply the director thought it was OK to delete? Yielding in a non-continuous flow from one scene to another, it was a little disturbing for me.

It wasn’t the best of science-fiction movies, but still, it was entertaining with some OK (read, not spectacular, but passable) special effects that made it for a semi-worthwhile movie to watch. I’ll have to give this one a mediocre 3/5 only because some of the filming and direction attracted my attention.

Go see it if you can, but when you do, don’t expect anything King Kong-ish.