Confused?

i'd say your more on than off

i think everyone agrees, a good premise..but it can be kinda hard to follow...the 'ghosts' jumping from body to body ala JC's Ghost of Mars (or thats what i thought) perhaps from reading earlier posts, the soldiers went mad-halucinating, killing each other off...as far as the bodies disappearing-maybe there was no mission to begin with...like one deserted solider (going mad)...who believes that something horrible happened to the rest of his platoon???

In the end-I guess it raises more questions than answers...which is always good for discussion.

BLAH

True events? Hmmm.

BEWARE, THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS SPOILERS. LEAVE THIS MESSAGE IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS SHOW.

I personally enjoyed the show but I could not understand it very much either. It would have been nice if I had remembered the scene in the hospital when they were interviewing the blinded sergeant. Did they say there were no other people in that mission, or did they ask him what happened to them?

Apart from ghosts here and ghosts there, I feel many things just don't click. Let's begin with the girl with the jingling bracelet. Indeed, the ghostly girl was the girl being hit by the rocket launcher. Question is, what was she doing in the seemingly unoccupied jungle? She was found wounded beside a long dead soldier (I was wondering if the male soldier was long dead, how come there were no flies buzzing around? But perhaps because the rocket launcher evaporated the flies. Yeah) The jingling bracelet that she wore shows indication that she was the girl all along at the end. Well, apparently, they didn't kill her off. My guess was that she died, or else sho would not have returned to get Lt Choi.

But, was she the girl at the whorehouse? I did think it was her too. I thought that probably since Lt Choi killed her there, she returned to the island to take him out. Instead, she herself got taken out! Frankly, this wouldn't make any sense at all.

And she was also supposed to have been Jung-Sook, the girlfriend of the undead Private Jung. But what has that got to do with her being at the whorehouse (if that was her) or on the island?

Then there were the American ghosts. Apparently when Lt Choi's team stumbled across the crash site, Boch's body was still intact. No signs of decomposition, even though the helicopter already had plants growing all over it. It looked as though Boch had just died there not too long ago.

And Boch (or rather, the ghost of Boch) warned Choi to leave the second storey alone. Choi eventually broke into the second storey when he realised Boch was never going to return. What they found were lots of equipment... which Choi never used! There seemed to be lots of hype building around the equipment in the second storey but Choi never used it! His men just loaded them to the ground floor and... nothing! The signal set which was used to comms the HQ was their own set. The cobwebbed and bloodied set was still bleeding at the second storey, so it goes to show that the Korean soldiers didn't even touch it!

And the ghostly American yankees treated the Korean soldiers with beer. Gee, I wonder what the Korean soldiers were drinking then!

And I was wondering what got into Sergeant Jin (the veteran staff sergeant). What has his discovery got to do with his rage. What has he got to do with planting the ID tags in the field so one of the men found it and ended up blaming Lt Choi. When Sgt Jin heard the voice of the dead soldier in the cave, the voice was that produced through a radio set with all the static and all, but it seemed like the show wanted us to believe it was spoken from the decomposed corpse lying near the signal set.

And what was the Lt Choi's fallen lighter in the field got anything to do with the show!

At the end of the show, when only the blind sergeant remained alive, all eight of the platoon (or rather, it seemed more like only a section) simply vanished. No, I don't think they were intended to be ghosts, but rather, they disappeared as mysteriously as the first section who had gone missing over there. The blind sergeant survived because I think he never had blood on his hands. Everyone else died by their own guilty past, or merely by accident (like the cook who was hit by friendly fire). But if I didn't remember wrongly, all the soldiers, including the blin sergeant, gunned down Sergeant Jin.

Yes, at the end, the ghostly girl was about to possess Lt Choi and Choi directed the blind sergeant to shoot him just in time when she herself set into him. That has to be it. Choi wouldn't have been intending for the blind sergeant to shoot the girl, because if it were so, he would have finished her off (or even attempted to) himself since he was holding this huge knife in his hand. Now, Lt Choi was a veteran officer. He still had his marbles to handle the crisis situation... but when the ghost girl walked towards him, he didn't run or make an attack on her! Why? Because the knife won't hurt her as much as bullets do (yeah, he dropped his rifle)?

Overall, the feel of the show didn't even feel like World War II. I just could not accept that the setting was that of WWII. Somehow just didn't seem to reflect it very much. The Korean soldiers seemed too modern. They behaved like American soldiers, and I thought Koreans at that time were more well-disciplined and even rigid and old-fashioned. Well, this is just my guess.

However, the show did bring about a spooky setting and I liked the characters. Some scenese were hilarious, like the one where the soldiers were to form into two teams and all ran into Sgt Jin's side. And there was about the sergeant who was actually just a cook without combat experience who tried to brag about missions he never took. And there was the infamous MODERN DAY UNIFORM DHL deliveryman. Gee... I think that was intended as a joke.

The spooky scenes, however, I felt were quite well-directed. The scene of the ghostly section prowling among the tall grass was one great scene. The camera direction was such that I thought the face of the last ghost soldier was going to be revealed but simply never did. Imagine you being that lost soldier who stumbled upon them! Imagine that you were justa breath away from seeing the horror... and in BROAD DAYLIGHT (and the lost soldier's discovery that those were spooks was really funny too)! Somehow, despite that sun, the ghostly apparitions always seem to have a grayer shade and when you look carefully, they just don't seem natural. I'd say that was pretty good direction.

The show got me a spooked a little. When I left my friend's home after watching this show, it was past midnight. I confess I got a little jumpy when I entered the elevator and when I was walking to my car. Even when I got home, I turned most of the lights on and hurried to bed beside my wife. But as I was lying in bed thinking of the show, many questions came to mind which simply don't make sense. I think if we really want the answers, we should ask the scriptwriter what he really wanted to convey. I'll bet the actors had no clue either!

Some of the scenes were appealing to me as I had military experience before. The combat drills of the actors were pretty good (especially when they were storming the haunted building). I believe these actors underwent some form of military training prior to shooting this show.

I've personally had some spooky encounters when I was serving in the military. Once I lost contact with my platoon and was in the middle of a foreign hillside in darkness. Fortunately, I was more of frustrated than frightened and navigated my way back to the platoon. Another time I was doing a topographical training in the night and distinctively saw a pair of legs walking in front of me (my platoonmates were all in this small area and we crossed paths very often upon looking for our objectives). I got a little lazy and decided to follow the legs since it was very likely that we were heading for the same objective. Then I realised I was heading too far into the forest, and stopped. Upon looking harder through the moonlight, the pair of legs seemed to be actually tree trunks or leaves or whatever. I could have been hallucinating but I just turned back to where the voices of my platoonmates were more loudly heard. Didn't want to find out what those really were.

Anyway, all this happend because of the warning sign said that all who had blood on their hands can't leave the place. they were all soldiers, so naturally they all had blood on their hands.

Just posting to say I've just seen this film and thought it was really good - but plenty confusing on first viewing.

@ lucas_bgn: Thanks - your post is by far the most coherent explanation of what is going on that I have read here.




"Goodbye Eric!"

It's very possible everything that happened to the soldiers in the building did happen, but not in that building. Otherwise why was there no-one there at the end when the blind soldier was rescued by the helicopter. The scene when he is sat alone portrays a white, bright room, as oppose to the dark, dusty hanging sheet filled room during the film.

All i can suggest is that what happened at the end actually happened out in the field, and the soldier is simply remeniscing all the events in his mind, which is what you see happening. It's quite possible they were at that very building alot of the time, but becuase if the scary events, he remembers it differently and in his mind, seeing dark tattered hanging cloths and scratched, mouldy walls. Surely you yourself have seen perhaps your own comfortable house in a completely different light when you are in a certain frame of mind after a fright, or when your imagination has run a little wild.

If he sustained his injury in the field, it's quite possible he made his way back to that place afterwards to seek shelter, and wait for the helicopter which was his only escape. When he got back he ran back everything in his mind which happened, and because of his horrific experiance began to call out again for his sargeant in anticipation, and deperation, because i guess you never know, in his mind he could still be alive and simply ran away after he fired the shots.


Another thing i found confusing, was the lone dead soldier in the cave which was apparently the one who had been sending out the distress calls. This doesnt make a great deal of sence since in the message he refers to the fact that his men are being slaughtered around him, and you even hear them dying. When this soildier is found however, his is completely alone with no bodies around him, and he himself seems to have just died of starvation, with no obvious injuries. The only thing i can think of is that he recorded the first message during a battle then found his way into the cave on his own and just died because he couldnt get out.

The dead soldiers in the swamp, in my opinion, were not really there. I noticed that one of the soldiers in an aerial shot was standing directly on top of one of the dead soldiers legs, asif there was nothing there. Surely he would have known he was standing on a body, if his other foot was touching the bottom of the swamp, even more so if he has seen bodies and is made very afraid by them, he would not want to keep standing on one of them. Maybe this is just abit of a goof, but maybe it's to show that they weren't really there.

As far as i can remeber only 1 soldier actualy saw the soldiers at first because he fell in the water, and then during the aerial shot you wonder how anyone could have ever missed them since they stick out like a sore thumb. If this soldier who first saw them actually saw a witherd log or something dark-coloured atleast, his current state of mind would see the face of a dead soldier, and after he screams what he has seen the brimming paranoia of the others could be simply unleashed at this point, making everyone 'see' these bodies. Interestly i think the sargeant atleast does not really react in this scene, so it's possible because he is of a cooler disposition, he didnt see anything and thought the same as me, that his men were just paranoid.

As for the girls significance i haven't got a clue, as has allready been stated, she could well have been a whore to the men in the picture and become a vengeful spirit as a result, or she was an assassin sent by north vietnam, consumed by hate for perhaps herself or her job, and eventually just prowling the area looking for victims. It wasn't really very well explained. There might be some significance which i could not pick up on simply because of the differences in culture and folklore. I used to think i knew everything about the story behind Ringu, until i found out the significance in Japanese culture surrounding wells and spirits.

This film can be looked at in too many ways just to figure out completely, i think the only way to really know is to just go ask Su-chang Kong.