R-POINT is one of the recent wake of films that cross the barriers between warfare and horror to deliver a kind of startling, in-your-face type of movie in which unlucky soldiers find themselves dealing with both enemy gunfire and spirits of the dead. DEATHWATCH and THE BUNKER are two of the best-known examples, although as a film, R-POINT ably holds its own with those two and offers a highly atmospheric film with just a few flaws that stop it being perfect. I'll list the flaws first; the script, for instance, is very much mundane and repetitive, consisting of the main characters shouting at each other a lot and calling each other expletives. In fact there isn't a great deal of characterisation in the movie as a whole, with only one or two unique characters among a lot of other interchangeable ones. The main other flaw is that the film is too darn mysterious for its own good; the ghostly horror is never really fully explained, and there'll be a lot of confusion if you don't pay the utmost attention to every scene throughout the film.
Now for the good stuff: R-POINT is a film that makes full use of the spooky, isolated locations. The creepy jungles are interspersed with creepy bush scenes, haunted graveyards, and a rotting Chinese temple. Best of all is an old hospital, by the looks of it, which recalls the kind of 'evil derelict building' seen in low budget US horrors like SESSION 9 and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Fill most of these locations with rotted corpses and weird goings-on and you have a truly spooky film that, while never reaching terrifying heights, packs more than a few scares into the running time. Much is made of superstition, glimpses of people who really shouldn't be there, and one or two great shocks, such as the scene with the guy sitting on the steps who gets a literal and unexpected bloodbath. The main menace in the film is a girl in a long white dress with long black hair; yep, the cliché stock character of many an Asian horror flick in the wake of RING.
The war elements of the film feel as realistic as other recent entries into the genre and there's a fair amount of bloodshed to add to the gritty appeal. The best scene by far is the finale, a bloody shoot-out on the level of RESERVOIR DOGS, in which the heroic lieutenant separates the wheat from the chaff by ordering his men to identify themselves; those who can't are clearly possessed. It's a sequence which recalls the infamous blood-test interlude in John Carpenter's THE THING, and while not as knuckle-whitening as in that particular film, it still packs an undeniable punch and ends the film on a high. Unsurprisingly, a Hollywood remake is on the horizon
Now for the good stuff: R-POINT is a film that makes full use of the spooky, isolated locations. The creepy jungles are interspersed with creepy bush scenes, haunted graveyards, and a rotting Chinese temple. Best of all is an old hospital, by the looks of it, which recalls the kind of 'evil derelict building' seen in low budget US horrors like SESSION 9 and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Fill most of these locations with rotted corpses and weird goings-on and you have a truly spooky film that, while never reaching terrifying heights, packs more than a few scares into the running time. Much is made of superstition, glimpses of people who really shouldn't be there, and one or two great shocks, such as the scene with the guy sitting on the steps who gets a literal and unexpected bloodbath. The main menace in the film is a girl in a long white dress with long black hair; yep, the cliché stock character of many an Asian horror flick in the wake of RING.
The war elements of the film feel as realistic as other recent entries into the genre and there's a fair amount of bloodshed to add to the gritty appeal. The best scene by far is the finale, a bloody shoot-out on the level of RESERVOIR DOGS, in which the heroic lieutenant separates the wheat from the chaff by ordering his men to identify themselves; those who can't are clearly possessed. It's a sequence which recalls the infamous blood-test interlude in John Carpenter's THE THING, and while not as knuckle-whitening as in that particular film, it still packs an undeniable punch and ends the film on a high. Unsurprisingly, a Hollywood remake is on the horizon