The setting is everything. Fog creeps through the jungle, swamps swallow the soldiers' legs and the abandoned French mansion looms over the island like a tombstone. Kong Su-chang uses this world brilliantly, and the film looks far more expensive than most Korean horror of its time.
The horror is psychological. A stone marker warns that anyone with blood on their hands will never go home, and from that moment you know most of these men are doomed. The ghost does not chase them with a knife. It slips inside them, and they turn on each other.
Kam Woo-sung is solid as the troubled Lieutenant Choi, and a young Lee Sun-kyun appears in one of his early roles. But the squad is large, and the soldiers blur together, which makes it hard to care about each death.
The middle stretch is slow, and the story can be confusing. Stay with it. The final half hour, as the men try to prove who is still human, is tense, paranoid and very effective. Critics were mixed, but it is an underrated war horror film.
