The Guard Post

Introduction

Having established himself as a director of note with the acclaimed ghost story R-Point, Kong Su-chang has revisited the horror genre with another military themed film.

When a guard post on the Korean border fails to report in, a group of military police, headed by a special investigator, are dispatched to the concrete structure to find out what has happened. Finding the place full of bodies, many hacked into pieces and the only survivor drenched in blood and holding an axe, they realise that something terrible has happened. The commander manages to persuade the top brass to give him until seven the next morning to figure out what has happened before they institute a cover up by destroying Guard Post 506.

The film flashes between the events leading up to the massacre and the investigation as documents and interviews with the sole survivor shed light on the past and events begin to repeat themselves.

Video

A very nice picture with suitably muted colours for the military outpost but, when needed, the reds are bright and the gore is plentiful. The film predominately takes place inside the bunker and there is only a slight lack of definition in the low-lit scenes; the few exterior shots look great and the setting seems authentic.

Audio

The highlight is an excellent and atmospheric score which really ramps up the tension to help with the jumps that never seem cheap or undeserved. The sound is nice and clear and the surrounds are used very well to help keep the sense of unease. There are good subtitles which are clear from spelling and grammatical errors.

Extra Features

The Briefing Room: Behind the Scenes is a half hour look at the construction of several shots, showing where Kong planned his cuts, how he directed his actors and other on-set events.

The Barracks: Set Design is nearly quarter of an hour and shows how the sets compare to the designs on paper by showing the process through photographs and clips from the film - I have to admit I found it a bit dull.

Guard Post Head Office: Special Effects and Make Up is disproportionately weighted towards photographs where videos of the prosthetics being applied would have been far more interesting and worthwhile.

Story Board runs for nearly ten minutes and flicks between the planned shots and the finished article - it would have been more interesting had they run simultaneously in splitscreen rather than cutting between the two.

Trailer Gallery just includes the Theatrical and Promo trailers, so not really much of a gallery but in Also Available there are nine trailers for other titles from Cine Asia.

Conclusion

Of Kong's two films, I probably prefer the ghostly R-Point to this but The Guard Post (also known as GP506) is a more accomplished movie by a man learning his trade and improving all the time. At over two hours, it requires patience and concentration as the action doesn't come thick and fast, but intermittently with the time in between, following the investigation and the 'normal' events in the past permeated by a sense of dread. The length is necessary to establish the group dynamics, properly understand the investigation and for the ending to resonate properly - if it was much shorter you wouldn't know or care about the characters enough.

The Guard Post is a very stylish film, with great attention to detail and, as the events unfold, it's almost like an updating of The Thing. There's not the sustained psychological terror of John Carpenter's classic but it's a fairly unnerving film to watch despite the pacing dragging occasionally.

If you liked R-Point, and perhaps even if you didn't, watching this makes you realise that there's yet another talented director in Korea whose work should be seen by a wider audience - I wouldn't be at all surprised if this underwent a Hollywood remake.