"I wanted to give it a feeling of Catharsis through maximized fear"

If you're in the film business, the chances are very high that you've heard of him. He's a star director when it comes to short films. Having dreamed of becoming a film director watching Hollywood films on TV when he was teenager, he concreted his dream studying films at KyungSung University and at ESEC in Paris, France. His short film, "Drifting", was invited to Wide Angle at the first Busan Film Festival in 1996. He received international acclaim as "The Corner" was awarded Best Short Film Award at the 12th Fribourg International Film Festival. Since then, he's put out marvelous short films such as "Body Temperature", "The Unfit", and "Superman in Early Summer".

He's the most-sought-after director in the Korean film industry. And he made a feature film directorial debut with "FACE". He wanted to make the audience shiver with fear through the story, not gadgets or special effects. He says, "I wanted to give it a feeling of Catharsis though maximized fear." And the film turned out just as he intended. "FACE" will undoubtedly hit the box-off hard and be remembered as the first horror movie that dominated the summer season.

"FACE" deals with human faces that express both beauty and ugliness, and all other human feelings. The story stems from a heartburning, a word that represents straightforwardly the emotion of the Orient.

Face reconstruction, restoring faces from nothing but skulls and a combination of art and science, is a sophisticated technique of crime investigation. In the film, it's used as a medium that derives horror and sadness of the wrongfully dead.

Being the first Korean film that deals with face reconstruction, combined with Korean emotions, the film will surely provide horror that's never been felt before.

2004, the first horror opens its eyes! "Face", the curse of the faceless

The face is gone. So is the whole body. What's left are the skull and bones. Now, the faceless comes back with a curse. "Face" is a horror film that tells the grudge and curse of this faceless ghost. Since the huge box-office success of "Whispering Corridors", followed by "Phone" in 2000, horror films have dominated the market every summer. Last summer, "A Tale of Two Sisters" became a smashing hit, selling over 3 million tickets. Its success is thanks to the fact that the story and theme struck the right chord of Korean moviegoers. "FACE" is a story about a faceless ghost, crossing the line between life and death. Its appalling twist will put the viewers in a state of shock, as "The Sixth Sense" and "The Others" did.

A horror film with a new style! Unprecedented story that's never tried before

The story of "FACE" has never been tried in any other Korean films before. Furthermore, it takes a different approach to how to induce horror. Other horror films used places or gadgets such as cell phones or videotapes as sources of horror. However, "FACE" uses face reconstruction, which is somewhat unfamiliar but terrifying enough. Face reconstruction is a sophisticated forensic technique used to ID the victim with a skull when DNA tests are not an option. It's not just science. Facials muscles and flesh are made with clay, applied to the skull, and then the photo-like face is drawn on the monitor with the help of cutting-edge computer graphics. In other words, face reconstruction is a combination of science and art. "FACE" goes beyond simple rules of how to implant horror in the minds of viewers, sending a wave of absolute fear through their spines.

First Korean horror film to be sold before its release! Pre-sale of $200 thousand to Asian countries

"FACE" is the first Korean horror film that has been exported before its domestic release. In March, at AFM, one of the biggest film markets, it was sold to various countries for a total amount of 200 thousand US dollars. This was achieved with only a-minute- 45-second-long demo trailer. It was sold to such Asian countries as Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, and European countries showed special interests in it. It's said that the unique sound and intense picture of "FACE" shocked buyers at the American Film Market. As Asian horror films such as "A Tale of Two Sisters", "Ring", and "The Eye" are viewed carrying Asian emotions, "FACE" received special interests for its scientific theme of face reconstruction and Oriental emotion of revenge.

A Faceless Curse is just behind you..

What's face reconstruction?
Face reconstruction was originally used to restore the original forms of the remains, and then applied to crime investigation later on. In general, when a dead body is found, fingerprints or DNA tests are used to identify the victim. However, when the fingerprints have been erased, or protein needed for a DNA test isn't sufficient, a specialist steps in to analyze the conditions of the skull, build facial muscles, and finally reconstruct the face. Using his anatomic knowledge, the specialist sculptures the face and compares it with the photos of the missing to identify the victim.

The process of face reconstruction?
To reconstruct a face using a skull, the sex and age should be estimated above all. Then, the average thickness of various muscles of the sampling group is measured with regard to the skull's shape. First, Muscles and flesh are made with clay and applied to the skull to form a rough shape. Then, a cutting-edge computer graphic program is used to concrete the face. In the film, Hyun-min builds a rough face with clay, and then uses computers to compare it with photos of missing people to reach a conclusion.

The success rate of identifying victims through face reconstruction?
There's research that says that 51% of pending missing person cases have been solved in America alone since the introduction of face reconstruction, which is quite high, beating everyone's expectations. In Korea, for a period of 15 months from September 1999, the face of the first Korean Catholic priest, KIM Dae-gun who died a martyr in 1846 was reconstructed. Professor HANG Seung-ho, the only face reconstruction specialist in the country, led the project.