I'd never heard of this film before I saw it and had no preconceptions or expectations. Actually, I was considering going to bed but KM 31 quickly grabbed my attention & I just had to watch it to the conclusion.
I actually thought the story was reasonably original for a Ghost Horror movie, so I don't know why people are saying otherwise. I've certainly never seen a movie where the mentally ill mother of twin sisters drowns / OD's, the sisters develop a telepathic connection, one gets run over after seeing a ghost in the road & ends up in a coma, trapped between the world of the living & the dead then the other discovers an old tragedy of a mother & son drowning etc... It was all pretty engaging actually. Admittedly, the style is very similar to that of recent Japanese horror films but that's not a bad thing.
I thought the acting was very solid with the exception of the old woman who was quite corny. In fact, Nuno & Omar were very well played. It would be easy for the actors to over act in this sort of film but everything was quite subdued which gave real tension.
The Special effects are excellent & a real feature. I actually found myself thinking "Whoa! That was impressive." on a few occasions & that's a very rare thing these days. There are far too many recent films that rely on shaky camera work & bad lighting in an attempt to create the mood & hide iffy effects or ones that have so much CGI they look like a PS3 game. KM 31 gives you gruesome ghosts in gory detail & lets you get a good look at just how nasty they are. Makeup & CGI blend seamlessly & everything looks real. However, tension is retained because we don't get to see them properly until the film is getting near it's conclusion.
Dialogue is fairly minimal & there's not a massive amount of character development but I don't think this is too much of a problem. My only real issue was the pace of the movie. Sometimes it drags a bit & there are scenes that could have been cut quite easily. On the other hand, there are parts where the plot moves by too quickly & scenes that ought to have taken 15 minutes are condensed into 5. This makes things confusing at times, especially at the end where there is no explanation why things turn out the way they do. I never quite understood the connection between our protagonists & the ghosts either.
KM 31 is well worth checking out & has a really good balance of tension & surprise. I give it a good solid 7.
I actually thought the story was reasonably original for a Ghost Horror movie, so I don't know why people are saying otherwise. I've certainly never seen a movie where the mentally ill mother of twin sisters drowns / OD's, the sisters develop a telepathic connection, one gets run over after seeing a ghost in the road & ends up in a coma, trapped between the world of the living & the dead then the other discovers an old tragedy of a mother & son drowning etc... It was all pretty engaging actually. Admittedly, the style is very similar to that of recent Japanese horror films but that's not a bad thing.
I thought the acting was very solid with the exception of the old woman who was quite corny. In fact, Nuno & Omar were very well played. It would be easy for the actors to over act in this sort of film but everything was quite subdued which gave real tension.
The Special effects are excellent & a real feature. I actually found myself thinking "Whoa! That was impressive." on a few occasions & that's a very rare thing these days. There are far too many recent films that rely on shaky camera work & bad lighting in an attempt to create the mood & hide iffy effects or ones that have so much CGI they look like a PS3 game. KM 31 gives you gruesome ghosts in gory detail & lets you get a good look at just how nasty they are. Makeup & CGI blend seamlessly & everything looks real. However, tension is retained because we don't get to see them properly until the film is getting near it's conclusion.
Dialogue is fairly minimal & there's not a massive amount of character development but I don't think this is too much of a problem. My only real issue was the pace of the movie. Sometimes it drags a bit & there are scenes that could have been cut quite easily. On the other hand, there are parts where the plot moves by too quickly & scenes that ought to have taken 15 minutes are condensed into 5. This makes things confusing at times, especially at the end where there is no explanation why things turn out the way they do. I never quite understood the connection between our protagonists & the ghosts either.
KM 31 is well worth checking out & has a really good balance of tension & surprise. I give it a good solid 7.