Sector 7: The Oiliest Monster in Town

What attributes would you give a scary sea monster? A long, retractable tongue? A pair of backwards elbow-joints? Blood made of oil that can easily catch fire coupled with a gift for scarring instantaneously thereby creating a seal that prevents further blood flow and oil-fueled flames? Yeah, me neither. I'd probably make the beast of Kim Ji-hoon's Sector 7 more agile in the water than on land and maybe give it night vision (and a hypersensitivity to light) since its natural home is many leagues deep in the ocean. That the killer creature is so unoriginal comes as a particular disappointment because its ancestors are so fascinating: aquatic, sharp-toothed fireflies that resemble the offspring of Tinkerbell and a sperm.

The humans aren't more impressive here either. The alpha female crew member nicknamed "bad-ass" (Ha Ji-won) may be tough as nails but she's also inexplicably inept at crawling. Her uncle (Ahn Sung-ki) isn't nearly as cool as you're initially fooled to believe he is and her motorcycle-riding boyfriend (Oh Ji-ho) doesn't even merit a proper kiss. Everyone in this movie falls short of your hopes including the short-lived resident geneticist (Cha Ye-reyeon) and the pointlessly crabby ship captain (Park Jeong-hak).

What works in Sector 7 is its pro-ecological message: We shouldn't look at living things strictly as revenue generators; we would do well not to keep drilling the planet full of holes and consider other less-invasive energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines. So next time you come across an oil-producing, underwater demon, put it on the endangered species list instead of sticking a fuel hose up its butt.

Little Black Dress: Four Soulless Bitches Want to Be Famous

Writer-director Heo In-mu's chick flick Little Black Dress has two characters worthy of screen time: Yeong-mi (Choi Yoon-young) a needy, aspiring screenwriter who wonders if her failure to get her ideas heard or to secure a promotion despite years of devotion is all because she just isn't that pretty. Her attempts to befriend the prize-winning new staff-member Yoo-min (Yun Eun-hye) don't get very far and even on her most suicidal day, she can't get much of a kind word from the colleague she so badly idolizes. The other fascinating character doesn't even have a name. She's simply a writer, who I assume is working on a soap opera. Broadly played by Jeon Soo-kyeong, this woman parades across the old screen like old Hollywood, milking not-so-hot one-liners for all they're worth, and generally making everyone else on screen look very community theater. That she also shows a sensitive side later on isn't a relief. It's a verification that you can paint with broad strokes without having to forego smaller touches when they're called for. Either of these women could have led to interesting stories but neither is primary role. Sadder still, they never have a scene with each other. For reasons that will dumbfound most viewers, Heo instead keeps her camera on four other, very less richly drawn ingenues, a quarter of narcissistic, hard-hearted gorgons who can imagine no fate worse than seeing a friend succeed and ending up in the shadow.

A certain poetic justice exists in having the one who appears the least talented -- the beauty of the bunch, Hye-ji -- land her fortune as a Levi's jeans model discovered at a nightclub. But even so, that little concession to the ironies of life, is unlikly to make you warm up to the soulless scribe Yoo-min, the wooden artiste living in poverty Soo-jin (Cha ye-ryeon) or the rich girl with a thing for underage boys Min-hee (Yoo In-na). Each character is hatable in her own way and whether Heo wrote Little Black Dress as a way to wreak revenge on former colleagues in her drama department or because she doesn't see just how monstrous these egomaniacs are is anyone's guess. There's a misplaced affection for the four girlfriends that definitely points to the second conjecture. For the love of God, I hope I'm wrong. No one that shallow is lovable. (Which means you'd never blame self-centered Lee Yong-woo for cheating on Yoo-min. You'd praise him. Only pain could help these four women mature if they ever do at all.)

Muoi: The Legend of the Portrait: Seeing the Bad Side of Things

Way back when, some time before the widespread use of electricity but after the invention of acid, Muoi (Anh Thu) -- the tenth-born child of a very poor family -- had the great misfortune of falling in love with a man named Nguyen (Binh Minh), a handsome, young swain with a gift for portraiture and a talent for womanizing. Both skills came into play when Nguyen decided to seduce Muoi while painting her picture. One mission accomplished (the seduction), he abandoned the other (the picture) and hurried off to resume his romance with a richer, former love. Back home, this original girlfriend (Hong Anh) caught wind of Muoi and decided to break her rival's ankle and throw acid in her face, as a way to let her know "You don't mess with my man!" Muoi took revenge by killing herself then returning as a ghost with a bone to pick. Nguyen then tricked her ghost into becoming an artist's model again so he could finish her portrait. Then some priests entered banging on gourds and Nguyen stabbed the picture to trap the evil spirit inside. End of legend.

Unlike me, the character Yun-hui (Jo An) thinks this story has the makings of a really good novel. Her last book, a thinly-veiled pseudo-memoir called Lies and Secrets, did pretty well but not so great that she's worried that Seo-yeon (Cha Ye-ryeon), the friend who she mercilessly defamed in it, would have read it since moving to Vietnam. So Yun-hui stays with Seo-yeon and asks her to help research the book. Hallucinations follow as part of the creative process. Eventually, Yun-hui realizes that even if you've betrayed your friend, who far from being a slut was videotaped -- being raped -- by the guy you have a secret crush on, you still have to kill your friend if she's possessed by a demon.

How does she knows there's a ghost at work? Well, a doorbell rings in the middle of the night right after a shower goes on mysteriously. That's one sign. Wallpaper uncurls off the wall in her bedroom, and lights flicker when there's a storm outside. Those are two others. Admittedly, they're not conclusive evidence, but fueled by the gossip of Seo-yeon's co-worker (Hong So-hee), who's half-Korean, half-smirk, Yun-hui doesn't let loose logic or a lack of lucidity get in the way of her mission. Her ex-best-friend may not be the kleptomaniac slut that she made her out to be in her mud-slinging roman a clef, but Seo-yeon did have the nerve to dance with that passably attractive white guy at the bar who Yun-hui had her eye on. Some betrayals can't be forgotten, no matter how many shots of Black Label you consume. Bring out the daggers!

Voice: Ghost Girls Gone Wild

Complain all you want about the misery of the paper cut. In Choe Ik-hwan's horror movie Voice, pretty young thing Young-eon (Kim Ok-vin) has her throat slit by a flying piece of sheet music. Now that stings! And before you have time to question whether that's even remotely possible, this fourth installment in the Whispering Corridors series will have you completely wrapped up in its strange tale of lesbian girl ghosts and Darwinian power struggles. And it's not just dead dolls doing battle either. You see, Young-eon's gal pal Seon-min (Seo Ji-hye) is being lured away from a posthumous romance by the high school's resident kooky girl Cho-ah (Cha Ye-ryeon) who, as luck would have it, shares Seon-min's recently acquired ability to hear voices from the grave. Cho-ah at least has the sense not to chat with spirits in front of her classmates -- a year in the madhouse provides useful life tools -- and now she has to impart that wisdom to her new BFF before some angry phantom shoves the two girls down an elevator shaft. So who do you trust? Your old best friend who never invited you over her house but has a promising future in opera or you new best friend who's clearly crazy? Which one would benefit your own career in radio?

A Bloody Aria: Darwinism for Tenors

Wishful opera wannabe In-jeong (Cha Ye-ryeon) has a hard day ahead of her. Not only will she botch an audition, have her lips licked by a lecherous professor (Lee Beyong-jun), run in impractical shoes on a sandy shore, and witness the senseless beating of a high school student (Kim Shi-hoo) by country bumpkins who will go on to stuff her in the trunk of a Mercedes Benz but she'll have to do most of it without a proper pair of panties. No one ever said a career in opera would be easy in the provinces. Metaphorical to the extreme, Won Shin-yeon's A Bloody Aria is a movie in love with the violence it critiques. Characters rebel against their oppressors then express their undying devotion to the same. Any attempt to call the craziness to a halt will only result in you being punished again severely. The king-of-the-hill plot has a subtext about the dangers of obedience yet it undercuts this commentary by celebrating its most sadomasochistic character (Lee Mun-shik) who likes to get a beating as much as he likes to give one. If there's takeaway wisdom here, it's that you can fight it, you should fight, you will lose, you might as well become a good fighter anyway.