Last Sips: Sector 7 (2011)

        Just watched a Korean sea monster film called "Sector 7". The story follows a group of workers fighting for their lives against a very durable monster. 


        I feel that the film doesn't really deserve a complete analysis given that it's pretty straight-forward, but I'll give a few pros and cons about it. 


Pros:

• The creature design is pretty decent. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's creative enough to hold you interest. The monster looks reminiscent of the "Queen Leech" (the last boss of the video game "Resident Evil 0") at first, but it goes through several phases physically.
• The action scenes are cool, especially the final confrontation. 
• Despite some plot holes and a slow, uninteresting opening, the story gains an "alright" status around the second act (about 45 mins into the film). Classic "survive-the-monster" style, mostly. It rarely tries to be more than what it is at this point; a B-grade monster flick.
• The uncle is badass, fighting the beast head-on at several points. Easily the best character of the whole movie. 
• The movie has bad effects, but they're really good bad effects. High budget bad effects, if you will. You can tell they spent a lot of money making them, so you could easily appreciate the effort and accept the effects for what they are (or I can, at least). 
• How the monster was defeated is neat. I liked it. 

Cons:

• Most of the characters are uninteresting (except the Uncle). They try to give the main girl a story, but they never quite reach the mark. Other than that, no one else is given much development. 
• The first 45 minutes of the film drag on, not really giving anything to the movie except an extended running time. Most of it is just people doing things like staring out into the ocean or having uninteresting conversations. 
• There's a really stupid dirt bike race about 20 minutes into the movie. Raises some questions...mainly "What the hell are dirt bikes doing on a oil rig?". Is it a Korean thing? However, one of the dirt bikes is used again for a pretty cool chase scene, so I'm able to slightly forgive it. 
• All the characters try to kill the monster the exact same way even though the method of execution didn't work the first 20 times. Yes, it hurt the monster, but it seemed to shrug it off pretty quickly. Either they're stupid or very determined to kill it this one way...both could be factors simultaneously . 

Other Notes:

• It seemed the creators of the film really wanted to see how much the could screw the main  girl over. This girl goes through so much shit, it gets to be almost funny, then spirals down to just being depressing. Never catches a break.
• The monster is virtually indestructible. Every time you think they finally killed the creature, the bastard just gets back up. It doesn't even pretend its dead (like other monsters do), it just strolls back on camera with it's best "haters-gonna-hate" walk. 
• Can't tell if the acting is good because I can't speak Korean. It looks okay and has subtitles...that's good enough for me. 

        Overall, I enjoyed the flick. One of the best "Sea Station" themed monsters movies I've seen, and despite what you think, there's quite a few of those (my favorite is Deep Star Six, but that's for another time). Once it got to the monster scenes, it became pretty entertaining. I didn't regret watching it, so that also says something. If you're bored and just want to waste time, give it a watch.