After this reunion of old friends, their visions begin to turn into a real nightmare as they begin to get killed one by one, all by a mysterious killer who leaves no hint of who it might be. Is it really the ghost who is trying to get revenge on them?

Review: What if someone decided to take the US movie I Know What You Did Last Summer and the Japanese movie Ring, then put these two in a blender for a couple of minutes, without adding any special ingredients to the recipe, the final result would probably be the Korean movie Nightmare. A conventional slasher movie mixing horror and supernatural fantasy element conducted by a very confusing plot with the over abused concept of a mysterious killer on a killing rampage.

I'm no a fan of slasher movies at all, I even try to avoid these types of films since my experience with them has been very disastrous so far. I like to be surprised and entertained during a movie, not necessary to see only gruesome deaths just for the heck of it. But it seems that slasher movies always use the same pattern which makes them unfortunately very predictable. This one at least tried to mix fantasy ghost effect but all the interesting elements of the movie are lost in the very confusing plot. Using a lot of flashbacks, which instead of clarifying some obscure points, made them even more confusing. Also the fact that there was no indication when the flashback started, stopped or even took place, it was a little hard to really point out at what time on the time line the scene was supposed to be.

If the unoriginal story would have been clearer, it would have probably made the viewing experience less painful as it was really hard to understand what was really going on. Even at the end of the movie, there are still a lot of unclear aspects, but if you can reach this point, you will probably not even care how the story will conclude anyway.

The acting was not that bad but since we didn't feel any sympathies for the characters, it didn't matter to me who would live and who would die. The small band of characters was just plain ordinary except the main female lead, who given a decent level of acting, you will easily forget the rest of the cast. It's just a typical slasher movie after all, so don't expect to see cool character design because they are mostly stereotyped characters who are created not to be loved but to be killed.

In every typical slasher film you have of course those gruesome killing scenes. At least Nightmare had some memorable moments. You got a couple of decent killing scenes that show a good amount of blood and a small dose of originality in the way the character gets killed. But we felt that these scenes were a little too stupid, since they always appeared in completely empty public place. The University library, public or university swimming pool and parking lot, why the characters decided to go there alone doesn't make sense. It is a cliché that we have seen too many times in American slasher movies, which I thought that Korean filmmakers would try to avoid, but unfortunately no. As for the frightening factor, it was not very impressive. The general ambience of these scenes was good and the ghost looked frightening enough but I think that because we didn't feel anything for the safety of the characters, we stayed indifferent to these supposed scary moments. It's a shame that the scary parts were not very frightening but it's still probably the best element of the movie.

At least the movie has a really good cinematography, sometime almost looked like an art movie attempt. It was like the director tried everything he could do to save the movie, thinking that we might forget the bad plot for these beautiful images, but unfortunately for him, it didn't worked.