Yeogo goedam II (1999)

Directors:

Tae-Yong Kim
Kyu-Dong Min

Writers:

Tae-Yong Kim (writer)
Kyu-Dong Min (writer)

Release Date:

24 December 1999 (South Korea)

Genre:

Horror | Romance | Drama

Tagline:

A student committed suicide, leaving behind a mysterious diary. Those who dare to read it are bound to die.

Plot:

Min-Ah finds a strange diary, capable of arousing hallucinations, kept by two of her senior fellow-students...

Plot Keywords:

Piano | Chorus | Regret | Birthday | Kiss

Awards:

1 win & 3 nominations

Cast

Min-sun Kim	...	Min-ah
Yeh-jin Park	...	Hyo-shin
Young-jin Lee	...	Shi-eun
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jong-hak Baek	...	Mr. Goh
Min Han
Seung-Yeon Han
Jae-in Kim	...	Yeon-an (as Min-hie Kim)
Hyo-jin Kong	...	Ji-won
Hye-mi Lee
Seong-Eon Lim
Ji-Yeon Park

Also Known As:

Memento Mori (International: English title)
Memento Mori: Remember the Dead (Philippines: English title)
Whispering Corridors 2

MPAA:

Rated R for language, some violence and sexual content.

Runtime:

98 min | 186 min (director's cut) | USA:97 min

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

UK:15 | Philippines:R-13 | Germany:16 (DVD rating) | Hong Kong:IIB | South Korea:12 | USA:R

Trivia:

The directors prefer the English title "Memento Mori".

Quotes:

Hyo-shin: There is nothing, / There is anything, / But there isn't, / Perhaps there is, / Perhaps there isn't, / Surely there is, / Said there isn't, / It's not true, / There is truth, / The lie there is, / There is a lie, / The truth there is, / No one knows...

Movie Connections:

References Carrie (1976)

Intriguing premise, somewhat fumbled

Memento Mori, as a sequel to Whispering Corridors, ditches the grainy, atmospheric feel of a gloomy autumn for a slick-looking summery feel. It may be incongruous with the nature of the film, but if it were to be shot exactly the same as Whispering Corridors then I would moan.

A lonely student at an all-girl Korean school finds a diary out in the schoolyard and is sucked into the world of the soon-to-be dead who has left behind. The film jumps around in time as the girl reads stories from the diary. A think a lot more could have been done with this concept since it has so much potential. But the film seems to take place all in a couple of days. Which doesn't give it enough of a change to develop. However, the version I saw was the 99-minute version of the film and since there is a 186-minute cut out there it may well contain a helluva lot more interesting story.

I didn't have a lot of trouble keeping-up with the characters this time though, but the story still seemed kinda incomprehensible. The flashbacks to the past could have been made a little bit more obvious.

Aside from this, it's an enjoyable time-waster.