Dolls can be so creepy
MOSHI MOSHI By Miharu Chang[/align]
DOLLS are pretty, but they can also be quite scary.
Just ask Korean actresses Lim Eun Kyoung and Kim Yu Mi of the horror flick, The Doll Master.
'When you're alone in a room with a doll, there is often an eerie feeling that it has moved even though you didn't touch it,' Eun Kyoung said during the movie's press conference in Seoul recently.
She should know, for she and Yu Mi both filmed with more than 100 ball-jointed dolls in the movie, which tells of love and revenge gone awry.
Short of spoiling the surprise, we can only say that Eun Kyoung, 21, plays a mysterious girl who has a doll that looks exactly like her.
She meets Yu Mi's character, a sculptor who is employed to model for a doll-maker, in a doll gallery.
Yu Mi, 24, said in an e-mail interview with The New Paper that the scariest thing about The Doll Master is, well, the dolls - especially those hanging from the ceiling and sitting above the toilet cistern.
Doe-eyed Eun Kyoung, however, said the filming was more fun than scary.
But she did admit that she was plagued by nightmares.
'Once I dreamt I had an out-of-body experience and saw myself sleeping, and it was very scary,' she recalled.
Weird things also happened on the set: One day, the lights went off suddenly.
But it didn't spook her enough to resist another horror project, Sisily 2km.
This time, Eun Kyoung plays 'a very lovely ghost' who falls for a gangster and, during filming breaks, she got a kick out of playing pranks on the crew.
Agreed Yu Mi, who also starred in the 2002 horror film, The Phone: 'I like the energy from horror movies. It's quite interesting to scare people.'
Besides their fascination with horror, Yu Mi and Eun Kyoung also share the same passion for acting, which gave them the impetus to major in the subject in university.
Both made their screen debut in 2002: Yu Mi in The Phone and Eun Kyoung in the sci-fi film, Resurrection Of The Little Match Girl.
GIVE BACK LOVE
Yu Mi, who also enjoys photography and yoga, said: 'The attractive thing about being an actor is that we can receive love from other people, and we can also give it back to them.'
Agreed Eun Kyoung: '(As an actress) I can experience some emotions or thoughts that I've never had in real life. I can also share these feelings with the audience.'
After her two horror projects, Eun Kyoung, who describes herself as a free and easy person, hopes to do romance for a change.
'I want to play a romantic role in a sad movie,' she said.
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Scary start that loses steam
SET in an isolated doll gallery in the woods, The Doll Master tells of how five strangers come together to model for a doll-maker, only to discover a shocking secret that may cost them their lives.
Directed by Jung Yong Gi, this horror flick kicks off with a suspenseful start but loses steam once the slash fest begins.
The fear factor here is ball-jointed dolls, and the wafer-thin plot has it that they start to have human emotions when they become too attached to their owners.
The dolls look exquisite, but I doubt you'd want to own any by the end of the movie.
