Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

anraancog WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!If you're looking for a horror movie that will really scare you, well watch this! I have seen a lot of horror movies already and this is one of the most memorable horror movies for me. I don't usually got scared easily but this movie made me to do so effortlessly. Watch it!

gary-985-94909 I watch dozens of horror movies to find one like THIS one. Several things to figure out, a look into elite high school in Korea, real characters -- Chang put some THOUGHT into this horror, and I'm going to seek out more of his work. Style, but not boring. Death, but not random, and probably gross enough to satisfy torture porn enthusiasts. A movie with a reason to exist, enjoyable horror. A+.A little disappointing IMDb doesn't have more information about a Korean film. This info needs to be filled in! Also disappointing my brief, well thought out review doesn't reach the minimum 10 lines for a IMDb review. Less is more, people.

kluseba "Death Bell" is a South Korean high school horror movie released in 2008. It includes lots of slasher elements, a few minor mystery passages that can be seen as a nod to many popular Asian ghost movies but also several twisted enigmas that the surviving pupils and teachers have to resolve to save those who are kidnapped one by one by a vengeful mind. Imagine a mixture of the "Yeogo Goedam" series and "Saw".The problem I have with this movie is not that it doesn't introduce anything new to the genre. A solid high school slasher flick like "4th Period Mystery" can be quite entertaining without being innovative. This movie takes too much time to kick the story off. The first twenty minutes don't even introduce you adequately to the story. The real reasons behind what happens in this movie are shown later in a few rushed flashbacks. The opening minutes introduce you to many unimportant secondary characters.In fact, there are so many pupils running around that it's a little bit hard to realize who is who. After twenty lame minutes, pupils are suddenly kidnapped and murdered at such a high speed that you might soon feel confused about who is still alive, who has been kidnapped and who is about to be murdered.Then we have the enigmas. Each time a pupil is about to be tortured to death, a madman presents the surviving crowd an enigma they have to solve at time to save their kidnapped colleagues. Sometimes the survivors even solve the enigmas but that doesn't keep the killer from continuing his slaughter which is pretty lame as the challenges feel somewhat useless. No matter if you solve the enigmas or not, the killer continues to spread death and terror until the very end of the movie.The enigmas are also rather hard to follow. The first enigma has something to do with mathematics but the solution is never shown to the viewers. For the second enigma, the survivors have to create a sentence which is very hard to understand. I neither understand the sense behind the sentence nor the way the survivors manage to compose it in the end. The other enigmas are a little bit easier to understand but not very interesting as well. The movie should have spent some more time on explaining the enigmas and their more or less associated traps as it is the case in movies like "Mindhunters".The ending of the movie is rather intriguing and includes a minor twist. Some people felt disappointed by it, others thought it was great and to me it was just okay. At least, it ended this short movie on a rather high note.Fans of high school horror movies or slasher films can try this movie out. It's nothing groundbreaking but surely entertaining enough if you don't want to watch your "Scream" movies over and over again. It's decently entertaining but only an average horror movie, especially if we compare this to other unique and stunning South Korean horror movies like "A Tale Of Two Sisters", "Bedevilled" or "I Saw The Devil" for example. But for what it is, it's an acceptable fast food horror flicks with a few Korean pop stars acting in here.

Coventry Meanwhile it's been more than three months since I watched "Death Bell" at the Belgian Festival of Fantastic Films, but for some reason it must have escaped everyone's attention here at IMDb, because the film didn't receive its very own page until now. Since it's been quite long, and since I watched a whole lot of other crap in the meantime, I'm glad I took some notes and wrote down impressions after seeing the film, otherwise I'm afraid I wouldn't have remembered that much. By that I certainly don't mean that "Death Bell" is a bad film. Quite the contrary, it's a very amusing horror flick with exhilarating gore and a dazzling fast pace. Originality, however, isn't the film's biggest trump as it borrows plot ideas and stylistic elements from various other and more famous horror movies. "Death Bell" somewhat describes itself as "Saw" meets "Battle Royale", with a bunch of high school students and their teachers desperately trying to escape the imaginative death traps of a maniacal killer. Twenty of the most intelligent, but also sickly competitive and pompous students of a prominent Seoul high school attend a special exam held on a Saturday. Suddenly classical music plays through the speakers and the television monitor displays images of one missing student trapped in an aquarium slowly filling up with water. The exits are sealed, the contact with the outside world is cut off and the group finds themselves subjected to the lethal and perverted games of a deranged killer. But who is he and what are his motives? Co-writer and director Chang (who was a guest at the festival and appears to be incredibly young) has obviously watched and studied a whole lot of contemporary popular horror movies and knows exactly what it takes to please a large crowd of fans. The death traps are complex and implausible – like the ones in all the "Saw" movies – but they definitely guarantee extended moments of suspense and a lot of gruesome bloodshed. The make-up and sound effects are fantastic, so if you have the opportunity to see this film in a theater or with luxurious home cinema equipment, you definitely will be overwhelmed. The characters are typical Asian high school students; like they appear in numerous movies, but the film does it best to provide as many backgrounds and little personality details that are also relevant. Considering the subject matter, and exactly like "Saw", the script is often incoherent and extremely implausible (example: how could one individual plan such a hi- tech and accurate large-scaled massacre) but you easily are willing to overlook that thanks to the entertainment value. The identity of the killer and his reasons are quite predictable as well, but then again, this is a film that primarily relies on inventive shocks and outrageous gore.