R-Point

When I reviewed Ghosts of War in late 2020, Kelvin mentioned the initial premise (before the stupid twist) sounded similar to the movies The Keep and R-Point. I couldn't convince Alex to rent The Keep through his Amazon Prime account, which, you know, fair enough. That wasn't even an option for R-Point, so I went ahead and just bought the DVD.

A group of South Korean soldiers serving in Vietnam are convinced to volunteer for a possible rescue mission. A different platoon went missing in an area called "R-Point" six months earlier, with only one survivor. But one night, there they are on the radio, asking to be rescued.

The platoon heads out and end up in what used to be a lake, but was filled in after some awful circumstances. In the fog, they find the remains of an old hospital, and begin their search. It's quickly clear they aren't alone, as a quartet of Americans show up one night, and there's someone leaving incense burning in a temple ruins, but they aren't having any luck finding the missing soldiers.

Then they start getting picked off. The lieutenant, who's already seen too much action, starts seeing a woman in white in the middle of the night. The men already don't trust him, because he has a reputation of getting people killed, and this doesn't help. His sergeant seems no-nonsense, but he's keeping secrets, too. All of this and the creeping sense something's very wrong starts to wear on the soldiers. 

So you never actually see a monster, or spectral horror at any point. Some corpses, yes. Some ghosts, who still look basically normal, yes. But a lot of it is just guys getting freaked out and jumpy and making bad decisions. One of the things I like about the movie is it seems to establish a rule about who might be able to survive when they first get there. Then the presence goes about making it so those people won't be able to, by stressing them until they do something stupid. 

And the fact this isn't some platoon that's been through thick and thin together helps that along. These guys don't know each other. They haven't found that line where the jokes are still taken as good fun and not cruelty. None of them know if they can rely on each other, so when things get worse, they fall apart rather than pulling together. It's also a way to flesh the characters out at least a little without it feeling awkward when they tell the others stuff about themselves. I ended up feeling awful for Lieutenant Choi, who tries really hard to keep the last few guys alive, to help them keep it together (for his own sanity as much as anything else).