HELL (2005)

Hell. By all accounts it’s a nasty place. I don’t think I’d want to spend my well deserved holiday time there. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll never see it. You could, for example be in a bus that crashes and ends up being sent straight to the place with the fire and brimstone. Coincidentally, that is exactly what happens to a Korean film crew in this movie.

The film starts quite dramatically with the aforementioned bus crash. It’s a messy affair with broken glass and punctured bodies, but rather than dwelling on this for too long we are taken back a day where we start to see the background stories for the main protagonists. As I said earlier they are a film crew that are getting together for a new project that involves them travelling in a mini to a location for filming. Without going into too much detail the characters include a wife beating drunk, a couple who’s relationship seems to be dying as he’s having an affair and she’s confused over her pregnancy. We also have a man who has feelings for the pregnant girl and then there’s… actually that’s enough, you want to hear about the meaty filling of the film don’t you.
So, they crash and their almost lifeless bodies are carted off to the local hospital where they are attached to all manner of bleeping machines to make sure that they don’t expire without someone noticing. However, the crew don’t realise what has happened to them and as far as they are aware the crash was a near miss and the bus comes to a gentle stop. All looks OK until one of them gets out and then everything changes. As soon as they step foot outside the confines of the vehicle they see where they really are, in a desolate wasteland with whirlwinds made of fire and pools of boiling orange stuff. Not the happiest of places I can tell you. Before they get their bearings they are found by some people with big pointy sticks and escorted off to a line of souls who are awaiting their fate. After a futile struggle to get away they finally come to their destination where the group is split into two. One half gets escorted to a nice cave with a cool blue vortex (but I’ll not tell you what that is) and the remaining members of this merry band aren’t so lucky and get taken to a place that I can only describe as, not very nice. There are people chained to dead trees being whipped and beaten, others being forced to drink what looks like molten gold, more still having various parts of their bodies removed so that they get a truly unique view of their internal organs. This is where the main point of the story commences. Those who are about to be maimed decide that this is not a good career path and try to escape, and the others decide that it’s their duty to rescue them.
So what does Hell look like in this cinematic vision? Well it’s done quite well, not major Hollywood budget well such as the smouldering depiction in Constantine, but it looks evil enough to make you not want to buy an apartment by the bubbling lake. Everything is bathed in a burnt orange colour so it all looks very uncomfortable. The land is desolate and anything that is there is either dead, dying or ravaged. The inhabitants look good too with their tortured bodies bleeding or spilling just enough to get the point across. As for the guards (as I can’t think of a better word) they look ok. I was a bit disappointed with their costumes but that’s a minor point in the overall visual presentation. The few CGI effects used are also done well and do not look out of place (which is something that can happen at the slightly lower end of the budget spectrum where they have a bit of cash to throw at some computer magic and just squeeze them in anywhere).

Overall I quite enjoyed this Thai fantasy horror but I don’t think it’s one that I’ll be rushing to watch again as there wasn’t quite enough to demand another viewing. Having said that, its a very entertaining creation which should be viewed by anyone remotely interested in Asian oddities.

Anchor Bay's UK DVD release is presented in 16x9 widescreen format and comes with an optional Thai (with English subtitles) DD5.1 soundtrack and also an alternative option to play in DTS. On the special features front we get treated to a trailer and a behind the scenes montage. The latter of the two is just footage from a crew member with a video camera and a bit of time on his hands. You see the barebones of the film production process and, although not extremely exciting is quite a good watch. In the Interview section you will find 8 cast and crew interviews which are a nice inclusion to the disc are nothing groundbreaking.