Winter Dreams...or Nightmares

I've always had an affinity for winter. I don't mean fluffy, powdery, Santa Claus winter, I mean 20 below, snot freezing blizzard winter. Growing up I used to wander out into the snow, often at night, and imagine I was alone in a frozen wasteland, which I was basically; Iowa. My dad would call me Nanook. I liked the cold, the quiet, the solitude. Maybe that's why I like stories about the Arctic.

I am watching Antarctic Journal right now, a Korean movie about a team of explorers attempting to reach the furthest point inland on foot. Why this would be necessary is besides the point. Their purpose is to do something no other man has done. Facing isolation, windstorms, -80 temperatures, and the approaching 6 months of Antarctic darkness, the explorers are on a tight schedule. Do they really need the ghosts of a failed 1922 expedition haunting them? No, they probably don't, but otherwise this would just be a movie about 6 guys walking in the snow.

Arctic, or Antarctic, stories are almost always slow paced out of necessity. Some people can't appreciate that. Antarctic Journal, is a slow paced movie. The team trudges on through the snow, headed for their goal. One by one, strange things start happening to them. Stranger so is the fact that their troubles seem to mirror the troubles of a failed British expedition from 1922. A combination of hallucinations and supernatural events, mixed with some good ole fashioned craziness keeps you waiting for the next tragedy. For example, down to four members, lost and freezing, the captain of the Koreans rolls up their map and starts smoking it. Funny. Something else I found interesting was that they had to pee in bottles in order not to pollute the pristine Antarctic environment. The Koreans blame this stupid rule on "crazy white people".

Antarctic Journal isn't scary, rather it's uneasy, uncomfortable. There is a sense of hopelessness for the team. You get the feeling that they are doomed. Asian horror movies are more psychological, with a few gut wrenching surprises thrown in. Uuggckk frostbite amputations can be gruesome!