[REVIEW] Film "Sector 7"

A scene from film "Sector 7" [JK Films]

Her colleagues call her ‘knucklehead.’ They even say she would probably mix her food with oil if any was discovered. The reason that Hae-joon (Ha Ji-won), working on oil prospecting ship Eclipse in Sector 7 on the south of Jeju island, is so crazy over mining oil is largely due to the painful memory she has over her father’s death which occurred in the same sea some 20 years ago. Despite her continued efforts however, the headquarter orders her crew to pull out and to help them do so, captain Chung Man-ki (Ahn Sung-ki) is dispatched to Sector 7. Yet the captain delays the pullout by a month due to Hae-joon’s firm request and while concentrating on the drilling one last time, members of the crew on the Eclipse, one after another, start dying. It turns out there was an existence inside the ship waiting for the blood of the crew.

No fun nor suspense no matter how deep the story digs around
Anticipation Quotient: 3 (out of 10)

Scenes from film "Sector 7" [JK Films]

A large monster has appeared again. But it does not cut across the Han River nor does it destroy the city. It is a never-before-seen monster that popped out of the middle of an open sea. While in “The Host,” director Bong Joon-ho created a monster born from the actual incident where toxic waste was illegally dumped into the Han river by the U.S. military base in Yongsan, “Sector 7” presents a deformed monster, from the bottom of the ocean in Sector 7, which in the 1970s drove the entire nation to dream of Korea being an oil-producing country. However, “The Host” became more than a mere horror monster pic where a large existence appears because of the multi-layered allegory that looked into what lies at the bottom of Korean society. But the pillars supporting the story to “Sector 7” are weak to the point you do not know when they will give away and the suspense surrounding the chasing that is placed on top of that poor structure is not enough to even provide the fear that the most basic monster films do.

Had the movie looked hard enough, it could have found plenty of reasons to have struck oil including the counterattack of a creation which did not turn out the way the Creator intended it to, the sense of space in the maze-like oil prospecting ship where one cannot get help from outside and the reckless greed of human beings blinded by energy resources but "Sector 7" worked hard at digging in the wrong places. The lack of personal stories for actors Ha Ji-won and Ahn Sung-ki who gave enthusiastic performances and the crew members who fought hard till the end in their secluded locations (Oh Ji-ho, Park Chul-min, Song Sae-byeok) made their efforts forlorn.

In all, the actors who run and roll about with the sea monster created through three years of work fail to fuse together and their chasing and fighting bark up the wrong tree. Amidst this, the cameras of "Sector 7" are seemingly captivated only by Ha Ji-won's action sequences where she darts across the ship's deck on a motorcycle and Ahn Sung-ki's markmanship which will hit a flying bird. JK Film, which raised anticipation for the movie by having presented works featuring a major flood ("Haeundae") and speedy motorcycle chase in the city ("Quick"), even failed to deliver its entertainment value and sense of humor. That is how “Sector 7,” Korea’s first movie released in IMAX 3D format which fails to justify the time and effort it put in, is a failed oil prospecting ship which only cast an uncomfortable black tent between the screen and the audience for 105 minutes.

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