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A young boy is
badly bullied by his classmates and
one day he ends up in an accident. Now, the class
mates have all grown up and they have all started
to receive strange letters (of DEATH!) with a game
of hangman on them. What they don't know is that the
hangman represents them and if the game is
completed, they will die a horrible death. One by
one the classmates start to drop dead, and it's up
to two of them to find out what's really going on.
Thailand seems to be the most active Asian country
in the horror movie industry at the moment, producing
numerous horror movies every year. Unfortunately,
most of them are really bad, but every once in a
while they manage to whip up something fantastic
(such as Shutter and Scared). Letters Of Death falls
somewhere in the middle as while it's not a generic
ghost story, it's still not all that good.
The movie takes the classic game of hangman and turns
it into a ghost slasher (haven't we seen this before?)
where an entire class starts to receive letters
(of DEATH!) predicting their deaths. Since there are
so many characters in here that are going to die,
it's hard to really connect with any of them. We
have to lead characters but they aren't all that
interesting, and their investigation is lacking in
entertainment leading up to a very predictable twist.
What Letters Of Death has going for it is that it's
got an overall good pace which keeps the viewer
interested enough to keep watching, it's got a
fairly high body count with some good death scenes,
and it's got a nice atmosphere. Unfortunately, the
scares fail to scare so in that department it
completely fails. It's never really that suspenseful
and even though it's easy to get into it (the killer
opening scene is reason enough to watch the entire
movie), it fails to frighten you.
Ultimately, Letters Of Death ended up being a mediocre
teen slasher flick which doesn't try hard enough to
be original, nor entertaining. It's the kind of movie
that you watch to pass time, but you will have
forgotten all about it once it's done. If you're in
the mood for an Asian horror flick but are sick of
generic ghost movies, I guess you could do worse than
this. Nothing you have to hunt down, but if you come
across it, it might be worth a watch.
A person gets split in half and we get a couple of
goreless impalements. The death scenes should have
been more over-the-top if you ask me.
Same old stuff that we've heard several times before.
Works for its intents and purposes.
Letters Of Death certainly isn't anything out of the
ordinary. It's a forgettable slasher flick with a
hangman concept that quickly gets overused. It is
definitely watchable though and a good movie to kill
some time with, but I wouldn't spend too much money
on it. It's worth a rent but probably not a purchase.
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