Sector 7 is a 2011 South Korean science fiction action 3D film directed by Kim Ji-hoon. It deals with a group of oil rig workers who encounter a creature off the coast of Jeju island that hunts them one by one. My Sector 7 (2011) movie review is below.
First of all, let me just say that some of my favorite movies (non-monster related are Koren). They do great action and crime movies. However, Sector 7 is not one of their good movies, not by a long shot.
In the beginning we are introduced to a bunch of people who are part of a crew of oil rig workers They work together, laugh, and tease each other. Among them is Ji-won Ha who plays Cha Hae-joon who is a tough as nails woman that takes no crap from anybody. Even her boyfriend (I forgot his name because he was not memorable at all) is like a trophy boyfriend instead of real boyfriend because she is tough and doesn’t show much feelings. Their “love” is more like brother and sister love. I didn’t really buy she was tough or that she was in love.
They try to make her appear that she is tough and cool (my version keeps calling her “Bad-Ass”) by making her ride bike, have temper, and act manly. She doesn’t have much development but that is nothing compared to the rest of the people who have wafer thin personalities and even thinner motivations/developments throughout the movie.
So far we are off to a bad start as I couldn’t care less about any of the people onboard. Second, the creature is revealed way too early. It looked OK but the CGI is horrendous (more on that later). If they were going for suspense, they failed. Showing it too early didn’t build any suspense so the reveal wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been. When creature is finally revealed, most scenes looked horrible.
When the creature takes some beating, it looked like a piece of red meat ready to be cooked. However, the movement and the sound of it made it somehow more memorable and just gross looking. Before the creature shows up the story is not memorable and after is it’s presented as cat and mouse game.
Finally, the CGI is AWFUL. Everything is fake in this movie – from creature, to dives, to helicopter/helicopter rides, to oil rig, to pipes falling on oil rig, to just about any scenes involving the creature and its interaction with the characters. One of the scenes that was absolutely awful looking was the race on the bikes. It looked even worse than amateur. Give me $1,000 and few months and I will come up with a way to make a better looking scene. It was supposed to show the main character as badass (and she did get her motorcycle license for the movie), but the execution was horrible.
The violence was also bad and fake looking (lots of unconvincing CGI blood). According to some sources, of the 1,800 cuts in the movie, the CGI accounted for 1,748 cuts. Needless to say if you have a CGI heavy movie, make it at least a bit more realistic. However, the ending scene is pretty good with the girl squaring off with the monster.
Besides the really bad CGI, the dialogue is pretty bad (almost immature). The characters are one dimensional as they get and the mediocre action was ruined by awful CGI. The main character was supposed to be a badass lead but she didn’t do anything relatively cool or brave. If you are tough because there is no more characters, it doesn’t mean you are strong and cool, rather you are “strong” because by default we have no other human characters to compare you with. I would say skip this one and watch “The Host” or “Chaw”.
Thank you for reading my Sector 7 (2011) movie review
