The 8th Night: Movie Review

Overtly complicated, "The 8th Night" had an interesting premise for its horror-mystery offering. But the film failed to make its various mysteries stick and gel together well. What we get instead was a very convoluted, very confusing and extremely messy narrative.

 

During the time of the Buddha, there was a monster who had one black eye and one red eye. The monster brought hell on Earth. Buddha was able to stop the monster and separated its two eyes one in the desert in the Far West and one to be protected by monks to prevent the eyes from ever joining again. In present time, the unimaginable has happened as the two eyes are about to join together and bring the monster back. A former monk and a young apprentice must find a way to stop the demon from inhabiting 7 human "stepping stones" before it reaches the 8th person and unleashing the Earth's demise. 

"The 8th Night" had this weird vibe that it wanted to be a deep and thought-provoking film as it had endless expositions throughout its runtime about finding one's purpose, forgiveness, and how to live life to the fullest. Like this ill-developed aspect, the film was just confusing most of the way like it didn't know what it wanted to do specifically and what audiences get is an out-of-focus experience. First, if you're expecting horrors from "The 8th Night" then you'll probably be disappointed. The lack of thrills and chills was not only alarming but the film had a tendency to avoid any gory scenes as much as it could. Second, the mystery-thriller aspect had a lot of surprises and revelations but most of these were not developed well and came out as extremely forced and unnecessary. Finally, the acting was so-so. Lee Sung-min's literal wooden acting as the monk Cheong-sok just didn't work for us at all with most of his scenes just feeling awkward. The only real praise we could give "The 8th Night" were its visuals and cinematography. But a film that only offers eye-candy in return isn't really cutting it for us and were assuming this should be the same case for most.  

 

Rating: 1 and a half reels

Why you should watch it:

- the visuals and cinematography were great

Why you shouldn't watch it:

- a very convoluted film with a lot of laughably bad plot holes