While horror movies have countless sub-genres for separating out the suspense-hounds from the gore-freaks and so on there are usually some pretty well established mainstay clichés on the whole. The staple of US horror for years has been the well-worn blade-wielding, lumbering boogieman and in Asia, if you’ve seen anything from Ringu to Ju-On, you’ll know the equivalent is the shuffling faceless woman with long lank hair, white gown and a monster case of PMS that extends beyond the grave.
Newcomer Derek Son revisits this idea of the creepy spirit of a wronged dead woman in South Korean movie Cadaver and transfers it to the suitably morbid setting of the Autopsy class at a medical school. The school mortuary screams out for something creepy to happen with its dim lighting and industrial architecture. You might think boring bright lights and scrubbed white tiles would be the order of the day in a hospital, but maybe I’m naïve, I guess if you’re dead it doesn’t matter if where you’re getting cut up looks like a warehouse or a beachhouse.
When members of a group of six of the students start meeting grisly ends after they begin their studies on their given corpse, they are left wondering if one of their number is a murderer or if there is something more sinister at work relating to the woman they are spending their days dissecting. As with most horror flicks the student group sticks to well-worn stereotypes – the nerd, the slut, the weirdo, the fat kid and so on with few existing as rounded people outside of their stock characters. Their teacher is nicknamed “The Technician” by the students due to his curiously cold, emotionless attitude to such sensitive work and he all but screams at the audience “I have a dark secret,” from the moment he arrives on screen.
Cadaver draws western as well as eastern influences with shades of Nightmare on Elm Street and Candyman creeping in over the usual eastern ideas. However, that also contributes to the biggest flaw in Cadaver. It loses focus to some degree in the final third with too many “twists” involving too many characters and the waters become muddy as to the motives and reasoning behind what is going on. Is it possession? Angry spirits? Zombies? Dream manipulation? Well it’s all of the above at different points, just because it seemed like another good horror staple to throw in to the mix and the result is a bit of a muddle. This isn’t helped by the fact that the movie does a pretty poor job of keeping its cards close to its chest. What may be considered plot twists later in the movie will be telegraphed shamelessly early on to anyone who’s half-alert.
What does work, however, is the atmosphere Son builds around his characters and their surroundings. With a creepy minimalism piano score and tension being used to effect, it means unlike US counterparts, the gore can be used sparingly and to effect rather than as a substitute for a lack of anything else or the need to disgust rather than terrify.
Too unfocussed to be a classic J-Horror or to attract new fans, but entertaining enough to keep established fans of the genre happy, Cadaver is one of those movies that begs for a Hollywood remake to improve what didn’t work instead of their usual process of neutering what did.
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