“R-Point” is a standard “lost platoon” story with a mis-matched band of South Korean soldiers dispatched into the Vietnamese wilderness to track down a patrol of their compatriots who everyone believes to have been wiped out, but who appear able to send spooky radio messages to their base. These messages and occasional appearances from the ghost soldiers are the most effective features of the movie, but the director eventually settles for depicting the descent of the search party into madness and their own personal hell, and this involves a lot of goggling into the middle distance at unseen horrors, and unhinged reactions without satisfactory explanations, rather like the Sunday night TV series that has been entertaining and frustrating us for the last three years.
This South Korean ghost story could have been better if it was more focussed. However, it left this viewer as bewildered and frightened as the soldiers caught in the maze of ghosts and military ordnance. The location works and the actors sell the premise well-enough but I spent too much time asking 'what just happened and to whom'. Shame as it could've been awesome.