DVD Review: R-Point (2004)
Rating: 
R-Point is a Korean horror film set in 1972, during the Vietnam War. What? Koreans in Vietnam? The average American viewer (like me) will probably be surprised to learn that the Korean government sent several military units to assist the American army during the Vietnam War. Since most movies about the war tend to emphasize the hellishly surreal atmosphere of jungle combat, the horror elements of R-Point don’t feel out of place at all- it seems a logical progression from Apocalypse Now or Platoon. You almost have to wonder why no one thought to set a horror movie during the Vietnam War before 2004, the year of R-Point’s release.
The film opens with a fairly standard premise. Romeo Point is a strategically important island located off the coast of Vietnam near Saigon. Battalion 53, a unit of Korean soldiers, was sent to hold it but failed to report back to headquarters. Superficial searches produced no clues as to the mens’ fate, but six months after the disappearance HQ begins to receive radio transmissions from R-Point, the same sinister, repeated message over and over, “We are dying.”
HQ recruits a ragtag search-and-rescue team that includes Battalion 53’s only survivor, Sergeant Oh, who was injured and did not accompany his men to R-Point. This motley crew of nine men is led by Lieutenant Choi, a disgraced officer who hopes to gain redemption through this mission.
The weirdness begins as soon as they set foot on the island. Right away the team is ambushed by Viet Cong, and are only saved by Choi’s quick thinking. Their attackers turn out to be a long-dead VC soldier and a badly wounded young woman. When none of the soldiers can bring themselves to finish her off, they leave her behind to die.
A little later the team comes to a field flanked by large stones, carved with the dire information that hundreds of years ago Chinese invaders slaughtered a number of Vietnamese and erected a nearby temple atop their graves. The men meet this revelation with swaggering bravado, a front they attempt to keep up with varying success as the movie progresses and things get worse.
And they do get worse. As an impenetrable fog rolls in, the soldiers stumble across the ruins of the Chinese temple and a crumbling French plantation house. The men set up camp in the house and begin the search for Battalion 53.
What follows is an intense ride through familiar horror-movie territory. One man meets us with a group of soldiers that vanishes. Mysterious offerings are found at the temple. The group’s radio expert comes across a recording that seems to preserve the horrifying final moments of Battalion 53. The group’s tenth member (Tenth member? But there were only nine…hmmm) is brutally murdered. Strange radio messages from a nearby French garrison start coming in. And in what at first seems to be a bizarre interruption (but later fits right into the story), a unit of American soldiers drops by to check on some equipment they are storing on the house’s second floor. They leave with none-too-subtle warnings about R-Point’s deadly reputation.
R-Point doesn’t offer the viewer anything particularly original or unique; ghost possession, strange radio messages, vanishing soldiers- we’ve seen it all before. But the film is fairly slow-moving, and the drawn-out buildup is genuinely creepy. This is due to R-Point’s excellent cinematography and its setting. The film was shot in Cambodia, and the Southeast Asian jungle is practically a character itself. Alternately beautiful and menacing, it creeps up on the temple and the house like a living thing. The constant opaque fog doesn’t help, and you’ll find yourself straining to see through the mist almost as desperately as the characters are. R-Point is obviously not a big-budget movie, but it doesn’t need to be; its horror is more psychological than anything, and the film is closely related to the American production “Session 9” in that regard. What special effects there are, are done well.
The film doesn’t hand the viewer a satisfying explanation for R-Point’s supernatural evil; the intimations and hints never quite come together into a comprehensible whole. While this is a common element of Asian horror and doesn’t detract from the story, viewers used to neatly tied-up endings may be left feeling dissatisfied. The climax itself is a bit of disappointment as it draws heavily on an element that has not been particularly pervasive throughout the film.
The actors are all quite good; each member of the team faces their worsening situation in a unique, and when they break down they all do it differently. The only sour note is the American soldiers. None of them seem to be professional actors, but luckily only one has a significant speaking role.
Like most of Tartan Asia Extreme’s releases, R-Point is nicely packaged. The DVD includes numerous extras: “The Making of R-Point” (A short film showing the actors’ military training as well as an interview with the director), “Creating 1972 Vietnam”, a special effects featurette, original theatrical trailers and, of course, some delicious Tartan previews that sent me straight to my Netflix queue.
In short, R-Point will not amaze you with new innovations to the horror genre, but it won’t bore you to death either. It’s not a bad way to spend ninety minutes of your life, but you might not want to watch it alone.
Details
Links
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417072/
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