Some interesting horror films have been coming out of South Korea over the last couple of years and Tartan Video have been bringing quite a few of them to North American audiences. One of the latest entries from Tartan's Asia Extreme line is Bloody Reunion, (known in its homeland as To Sir, With Love) a somewhat low budget slasher film that delivers the gore you'd expect but which also contains an unexpectedly intelligent plot that helps it rise above the restrictions sometimes associated with the sub-genre.

The movie tells the story of a group of adults in their early twenties who used to be in the same class together where they were taught by Mrs. Park (Mi-hee Oh). Now suffering from a terminal illness that has her confined to a wheelchair and in need of constant help from a caregiver, Mrs. Park wants nothing more than to meet with the children she taught for one last time before she passes on. Life has been difficult for her – years ago she gave birth to a deformed boy who she kept locked up in the basement of her seaside home, and shortly after that happened her husband hanged himself – and this one last reunion would allow her to go out on a high note of sorts.

The former students all show up, each one changed a fair bit since they were kids but still recognizable to one another. Surprisingly enough to most of the attendees, the 'shy kid' who was once picked on for going to the bathroom in his pants also attends. This was unexpected, as he dropped out of school once his mother was hit and killed by a car when they were all much younger than they are now. As the day turns into night the group reminisces and gets caught up with one another, drinking and eating and having a good time until, later that evening, they start disappearing one by one. A deranged killer wearing a bunny mask on his face is stalking the guests and killing them off, but just whose face is behind the mask is a mystery indeed.

Bloody Reunion is, on the surface, a fairly standard slasher movie. Our killer hunts his prey one at a time and brings them back to his basement lair where he uses various creative ways of dismembering and torturing them to eventually end their lives. Underneath the gory set pieces, however, there's more to the film than that. You'll pick up on some of the foreshadowing fairly early on if you pay reasonably close attention to some of the little details in the film, and before you know it the movie is dealing as much with how we tend to repress unfavorable memories from our youth once we reach adulthood and how even the smallest act of cruelty can have a huge effect on the lives of a kid. Of course, there's a big twist at the end and the conclusion is rather ridiculous but getting there is fun and Bloody Reunion turns out to be considerably more intelligent than your average 'masked maniac kills people' slasher film thanks to the little details and snippets of information that we get about these characters' pasts.

With that said, this is a horror movie after all, so does it deliver any scares? There are a few nice jump scenes and some effective building of tension in the last half of the film. The kills are gory, nasty and creative and the special effects are handled quite well. SO yeah, there's definitely enough of the requisite bloody mayhem here to satisfy most genre fans. On top of all that, however, is some genuine emotional tension that makes the movie much more effective than it would have been had it stuck to the tried and true slasher formula. Thankfully Bloody Reunion uses some decent performances and a clever script to rise above slasher film trappings and emerges a smart, scary and interesting film. It's not perfect, and some of the handheld camera work gets dizzying at times, but if you're looking for something outside the norm without journeying too far away from horror movie territory, it's well worth a look.

Video:

The 1.85.1 widescreen transfer is anamorphic but there are a few spots where the image is pretty murky looking and some mild compression artifacts are present in darker scenes, obscuring some of the fine detail. Color reproduction is decent but not great though flesh tones look lifelike and natural. There are no problems with edge enhancement to report and only some slight line shimmering present on the picture. Brightness and contrast are fine but there is some mild blurring present during fast motion that obscures things a little bit. A watchable transfer, sure, but not a great one.