Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Still, Won pulls off a rare trick: to be funny and frightening while continuing to ratch the tension up and up. Performances, too, are top notch.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2008

A gripping, disconcerting and thought-provoking exercise that eschews graphic horror in favour of complex, darkly funny psychological drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2008

It's slow, bloody and pretty much devoid of merit.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 24, 2008

Time should surely now be called on the vogue in Korean cinema for black-comic ultraviolence.

| Oct 24, 2008

Director Won Shin-yun infuses the moralisms with a pulpy energy that recalls cheery shockers such as Hostel and Saw, while also indulging in Three Stooges-style bumpkin-knockabout humour.

| Oct 24, 2008

Despite the title, A Bloody Aria is unlikely to be music to the ears of extreme cinema fans.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 24, 2008

Sore disappointment is in store for anyone expecting Won Shin-yun's revenge/psycho thriller to emerge as the new Oldboy.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 24, 2008

Won's critique of the abuse of power in South Korean society lacks trenchancy, but he subverts convention with an incisiveness lacking in much transatlantic horror.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2008

It's supposedly an essay on the nature of human brutality and there is a certain amount of narrative deftness at play, but whether in the sequences of dialogue or violence, in both cases extended, the film is not merely unattractive but also uninteresting

| Oct 24, 2008

I suspect it falls between two stools: not nearly grisly enough for the aficionado of extreme Asian cinema, rather too grisly for everyone else.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 24, 2008

It all looks like Michael Haneke-lite but, as a comment upon the fact that people tamed by violence tend to promote it when given half a chance, it has its grimly amusing merits.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 24, 2008

Korean filmmaker Won uses a startlingly in-your-face style for this outrageous examination of bullying at all kinds of levels. Both unsettling and entertaining, it also finds real terror and black humour in the least likely places.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 24, 2008

It would have been fine but the acting is pretty over the top, making scenes almost laughable.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 18, 2008

will ultimately confound American audiences who don't appreciate the complexities of the Korean national psyche

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 22, 2008

A simply unpleasant experience.

Full Review | Jan 24, 2008

For the most part A Bloody Aria has an adept way of muddying these themes for audiences expecting the usual gore-thirsty trip.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 17, 2008

It may seem an odd thing to say about a film in which a baseball bat as an instrument of assault and rape is a recurring theme, but what makes A Bloody Aria a darkly delightful surprise is its restraint.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 11, 2008

The film isn't illuminating, just inflammatory.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 3, 2008

With so much pointless violence for the sake of violence and a terrible non-sensical ending, this film is a grueling and pointless exercise that never fully delivers on its premise.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jan 3, 2008