The Guardpost
Gong Su Chang


A remote guardpost in the demilitarised zone separating North and South Korea is the perfect setting for this creepy tale.
The film begins with a group of soldiers nervously patrolling the maze-like post and finding several dead bodies as well as a bare-bodied soldier covered in blood and menacingly holding an axe.
Military investigator Sergeant Major Noh (Chun Ho Jin) is given until the morning to unravel the truth of what happened, as the head of the post was the son of the army chief of staff and the cover-up will soon begin.
The opening had promise but the film is littered with red herrings, swimming in a graphic sea of blood and body parts, including brain matter and a blown-off limb.
After a while, you begin to admire writer/director Gong Su Chang’s gumption in upending the audience’s assumptions of the horror thriller genre.
But the movie starts to drag in the middle and, most annoyingly, a videotaped clip which explains what went down just happens to have a crucial portion missing when it ends up in Noh’s hands.
If he had seen this key footage, which is revealed to the audience at the very end, a good 30 minutes could have been shaved off the two-hour running time.
(ST)