SYNOPSIS Mi-Jung Seo Ye-Ji is a rookie film director and she has been preparing a horror film for the past 8 years. One day, Mi-Jung hears about a movie which was banned. Mi-Jung wants to know about the film. She begins to search for the movie. Her search takes her to meet Jae-Hyun Jin Seon-Kyu, who is the director of the film. Jae-Hyun warns Mi-Jung to forget about his film, but she ignores his warning. Mi-Jungâs obsession with the movie leads her to bizarre and horrible cases. REVIEW The South-Korean horror mystery by the director Kim Jin-won also known for The Butcher, 2007, offers some mild thrills, accompanied by an irritatingly inane plot. The story revolves around a film director Mi-Jung Seo Ye-Ji, who after some previous success has been attached to a new project. However, the artistic muse has well and truly left the building and Mi-Jung is left banging her head against the wall trying to come up with a new idea. When she hears of a local urban legend of a film so terrifying that it made the premier night audience run for the hills and that is supposedly directed by a ghost, she naturally must investigate. Not satisfied with only finding a mere trailer of the said film, she also tracks down the filmâs human director and despite his stark warnings, keeps on investigating the mystery further. Soon her life is penetrated by ghostly apparitions and strange happenings of all description, enough to make most normal humans to back the hell off. Not Mi-Jung though. Instead she goes and finds the filming location of the original film and ventures forth to film her own future masterpiece in the same locale, the results of which, as you might have guesses, will be deadly. So, what we have is a film about making a film about a film. How very metaâŚOr it would be, had the story been build a bit better than it is. The first half is perfectly adequate, if little predictable, with Mi-Jung digging up information about the supposedly deadly film. The singlemindedness of her search for inspiration is familiar from numerous found footage films where a dedicated director takes a project to dangerous waters with their unrelenting need to continue, even when everything and everyone around them keeps telling them not to. This is very much also the case with Mi-Jung, who in all honesty takes the ghostly encounters in her stride and just carries on like nothing ever happened. There are a few scenes offering some genuinely well built tension and eerie atmosphere and the ghost haunting this particular story is honestly quite creepy. I certainly would not want something like that creeping around my house. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between and the great ambience they offer is not really followed up. Instead the film goes into bit of overdrive around mid-way through, never to recover. It is somewhat frustrating that the parts of Warning Do Not Watch that could, and should have been its strong points, end up being its downfall. Once Mi-Jung enters the place where all the paranormal activity started, the lines between reality, film and imagination become dangerously blurred. And I do not mean dangerous for the characters but for the viewers. There two ways you can approach this type of reality distortion one is to take a very subtle approach, where the main characters sanity and grip on reality is questioned through small, but effective little hints dropped amongst the rest of the story. This approach of course demands an otherwise strong, character driven plot and thus not suitable for just any kind of story. The other option is to go the whole hog and fully lean into the more bizarre aspect of the reality blur and potentially create something more on the art house side of horror. My guess is that Warning Do Not Watch was aiming for the latter, but unfortunately missed the target by at least couple hundred meters. While there is a definite effort here to create some kind of mind bending meta mystery, unfortunately due to the lack of commitment to the more off the wall themes, the end result is wishy-washy at best. I cannot say I hated Warning Do Not Watch. I had some enjoyable moments and a very impressive looking ghost. But I also cannot say I loved it, as the rather annoying shortcomings in the story department really let me down. It is perfectly adequate for one watch but will probably leave your memory as quickly as it entered.
Buildyour own portfolio. Take advantage of flexible, easy-to-use tools with Merrill EdgeÂŽ Self-Directed Investing. Get a professionally managed portfolio. Investment professionals design and manage a portfolio aligned to your goals with Merrill Guided Investing. Work withReviewAny creative type who has ever felt the pressure of a deadline or living up to lofty expectations can sympathize with Mi-jung. Producers pinned big investments onto Mi-jungâs big dreams when she became a hot up-and-comer following a successful short in a film festival. Now the fledgling director has to fulfill that promise with her overdue horror movie script, and she doesnât know where to find gets a good lead from her friend Joon-seo. Joon-seo vaguely remembers an urban legend about a cursed student film whose creator claimed it was actually shot by a ghost. Joon-seo canât recall the name of the movie or the director, but he does remember a rumor about an audience fleeing in panic when they screened the curiosity sufficiently piqued, Mi-jung starts sleuthing through film festival archives, online forums, and university student stories. At the end of the domino line, Mi-jung finally meets the man who made the fabled film. Physically and emotionally scarred, Jae-hyun is just a shadow of the upstart cinema student he was ten years ago. He responds to Mi-jungâs questions concerning his mystery movie âWarningâ only with cryptic gibberish and violent by his deterrence, Mi-jungâs fascination with Jae-hyunâs film evolves into obsession. That obsession compels Mi-jung to steal a hard drive containing footage from the movie. With help from Joon-seo, Mi-jung starts scouring clips for clues about what really happened in the abandoned theater where Jae-hyun shot âWarning.â Mi-jung may have finally found the scariest horror story imaginable, but it may come with the cost of becoming a murderous ghostâs next terrified target.âWarning Do Not Playâ is simultaneously difficult yet somewhat simple to review. Itâs both of those things for the same reason. Essentially, âWarning Do Not Playâ is such a straightforwardly streamlined little haunter, it doesnât leave a lot to really dig into with detailed competent in technical terms like cinematography, lighting, editing, etc., no one thing in âWarning Do Not Playâ stands out as particularly remarkable, although I donât mean that in a belittling manner. Itâs just a challenge to come up with anything eloquent or entertaining to say since âitâs fineâ suffices as a summary for almost every element of the story basically boils down to a standard yet serviceable Asian ghost yarn. In addition to the bit about being based on an urban legend, youâll see beats that typically go with this territory including a wronged woman who turns into a stringy-haired phantom and some squishy scares involving an eyeball popping up for sudden staredowns. The âcursed filmâ component covers trampled ground too, though it makes for macabre milieus including a spooky scavenger hunt to uncover the truth, a crackpot hideout for the demented director, and light âfound footageâ pieces to fill in the down to two remaining sentences in my scant screening notes, which is uncharacteristic considering how furiously I usually type or write while watching a film. One of those notes is only an observational aside about the movieâs odd penchant for having the director physically assault Mi-jung whenever he gets angry, with no less than three separate scenes featuring his hands around her throat. Honestly, I think my inability to come up with anything clever or constructive to add speaks more to the wispy impression âWarning Do Not Playâ leaves than my inability to contribute meaningful not sure I can say more about the movie without sounding like a high school student effectively shrinking the margins to make it seem like I hit the minimum word count. The basic concept tells fans familiar with Korean horror what theyâre in for, which is a medium temperature thriller favoring atmospheric suspense built from breadcrumb trail plot progression over frightful sights and visceral shocks. Set expectations no higher or lower than âaverageâ and the film will meet you right there in the will stay dry. Socks wonât leave your feet. Your mouth might widen in a yawn well before your eyes ever do the same out of shock. âWarning Do Not Playâsâ casual creepiness can cash checks for a momentary goose pimple or two. Your mind and your memory will merely have moved on to more resonant matters by the time you wake the next The filmâs Korean title is âAmjeon.âReview Score 55 Thishelp content & information General Help Center experience. Search. Clear search 3 star haunted video horror/mystery. Warning Do Not Play is a South Korean Shudder original horror film written and directed by Kim Jin-won The Butcher. It is available on , a premium horror/thriller streaming service and also on Shudder UK. âDo you have a religion? Stop thinking about Warning, start going to church.â Mi-Jung Ye-ji Seo â Save Me, Lawless Lawyer is a young film director. She has been contracted to make a film on the back of film festival success but is struggling to come up with the goods. With her final deadline looming, things look bleak, her dreams provide her with some ideas but not enough. As luck would have it, good friend and former colleague Joon-Seo Yoon-ho Ji â In Between Seasons, Argon remembers a rumour that he heard. A student filmmaker produced a film for his graduation project which was supposedly so scary that half the audience ran out and one of them died of a cardiac arrest. Unfortunately he knows neither the title nor the year it was made, just the University. Spotting an opening, Mi-Jung heads off to Daejeon University to investigate, but runs up against resistance there too until she speaks to the students, who all know the rumours about the film âWarningâ, supposedly made by a ghost. Finally, she is able to track down director Kim Jae-hun Seon-kyu Jin â The Outlaws, Kingdom, however he is less than pleased to see her and offers a stark warning to leave well alone. Of course she does not do this and events begin to spiral out of control as the lines between truth and fiction blur. Warning Do Not Play is an interesting addition to the haunted film genre. It approaches from several angles, traditional horror film style for Mi-Jungâs activities and found footage style for the actual film she is researching, as well as a making-of feature. Clever as all this is however, it does eventually result in the story becoming a little fragmented and rather confusing and difficult to follow in places. It does have a good and very surprising twist and the whole thing is carried by an excellent acting performance by Ye-ji Seo who really makes it believable. The majority of the horror comes towards the end of the film, prior to that it is more of a mystery. Once it arrives it is a blood soaked eyeball fest and quite satisfying. Well worth a watch as something a little different in this genre, sure to delight fans of Korean horror and haunted films. âSo, what happens to the director and her friend, in the end?â Warning Do Not Play is available to stream now on Shudder. ďťż DirectorKim Jin-won GenreHorror/mystery StarringYe-ji Seo, Seon-kyu Jin, Yoon-ho Ji