R-Point Review

Remember The Bunker? Deathwatch? Other recent films about platoons in historical wars being picked off one by one by evil spirits?  This Korean version checks all boxes of its son-of-The Keep sub-genre and offers an unusual take on a familiar war, but is finally just another solid spookfest. Set during the Vietnam War, when South Korea fought alongside the Americans, it involves a burned-out officer taking a group of doomed losers to R-Point, a remote area haunted by the dead of this and several earlier conflicts. They hole up in an eerie, dilapidated mansion and either go mad and turn on their comrades or are lured to doom by a ghostly girl. Director Kong Su-chang isn’t above sampling Full Metal Jacket or any number of Asian ghost stories, but it still plays pretty well.