VOD Review: DEATH BELL: BLOODY CAMP Because School Does Not Suck Enough Already!

How much did you hate school when you were a kid? Oh my god how slow was that clock? Will it never reach that blessed hour of 3pm? And what if it was time to go and you couldn't leave? You were locked in! And some psycho bastard has started picking you off one by one? Holy crap does that school suck! A Summer class of elite Korean students find themselves locked inside such a school on a dark and rainy night. And someone is inside with them. The bell has rung. It is time for class at Death Bell: Bloody Camp [고死 두 번째 이야기 : 교생실습].

The original Death Bell movie proved to be quite the hit over in Korea and it is nice to know that studio systems around the world are not immune to the lure of success and profitability. But while the first film exploited the pressure that students in Korea feel to study hard and succeed at school so they can get into a university and turned that into an plot device - the students in the first film had to solve complex problems lest one of their friends die - the class of students in the second film merely have to solve a murder mystery committed by one of their fellow classmates. The sequel does lack adequate pressure and suspense. Though they start to turn on each other (J'accuse! J'accuse!) none of that ever goes anywhere until the very end and I believe that to be an opportunity missed for the necessary tension needed to make this film a true nail biter. 

Perhaps the sequel spends too much time trying to explain how everyone got to this horrific point. The screenplay by Lee Gong-joo, Lee Jeong-hwa and Park Hye-min pretty much goes against the norm of sequels in which it is practically law that you abandon story and turn everything up to '11'. I can only presume that this is a sequel in spirit however - that there is no direct link to the first film - and it is merely another horror film about students being stuck in a school with a psychotic killer. And with no link to the first film you cannot presume that your audience already knows the back story thus you have to create one and spend time on it which could be used for more kills. 

What few kills there are though admittedly are quite creative and fun. Credit is due for those, though they may not be as explicit as say any western cinema counterpart, if you do go out in DB Bloody Camp [고死 두 번째 이야기 : 교생실습] at least you go out in style. It is easy to see the impression made by a certain seemingly never ending horror franchise from this side of the Pacific. Because there is a limited number of kills though the film does leave me wishing for more; not quite enough to satisfy my blood lust. 

A lot of good stuff has been happening for Japan Flix over that last few months. They've brought on titles from Pink Eiga, Media Blasters and Well Go USA which has dramatically improved their lineup from when they first started. If you haven't been over there in while I really think it is worth going back and checking it out.