Whispering Corridors (1998) Yeogo Goedam
Directed by Ki-hyung Park
Whispering Corridors should be placed in the genre of films encompassing the horrors of school, along with Suspiria and Carrie. School corridors are rife with rear and loathing, often due to a teacher who insists on pupils treating each other as enemies and competitors rather than allies. The Korean educational system is notorious for its toughness, and this movie’s critique of bullying authoritarianism touched a nerve with Korean audiences.
One of the films that prompted the late-nineties East Asian horror boom Whispering Corridors was a huge domestic success and spawned several imitations such as Wishing Stairs (2003) which mixes its story of backstage rivalry at a ballet school with a legend about a spirit who grants wishes when invoked on the 29th step of a staircase, and Voice (2005) about the ghost of a murdered singer.
Park’s Whispering Corridors however, benefits as much from his focus on complex and psychologically plausible relationships between its troubled teens as it does on delivering its gory set pieces and shocks.
If you like this also check out the sequel, Memento Mori (1999) Yeogogoedam dubeonchae iyagi also known as Whispering Corridors 2 directed by Kim Tae-yong and Min Kyu-dong. Also set in an all-girls high school, but the films are otherwise unrelated.
Phone (2002) Pon
Directed by Byung-ki Ahn
Having received death threats after uncovering an underage sex scandal, Seoul journalist Ji-won hides out in an empty house owned by her best friend Ho-jung and her husband Chang-hoon. She has disposed of her old phone, but now begins to receive indistinct but disturbing calls on her refurbished but as yet unregistered, mobile phone.
Her friend Ho-jung’s five-year-old daughter Yung-yu, unwittingly answers one of these calls, and begins to display oddly psychotic behaviour – flying into uncontrollable rages and accosting her father like a petulant and flirtatious woman. Ji-won discovers that her phone once belonged to a schoolgirl who committed suicide.
With a female investigative journalist as the protagonist and a plot centering on the effects of haunted technology, Ahn’s film has swift pacing and a satisfying plotline involving infidelity, obsession, family relationships, sex and murder. It also boasts good performances, particularly by the extraordinary Seo-woo Eun as the possessed five-year-old Yung-yu. Phone was supported by the Disney subsidiary Buena Vista Korea, initiating a new alliance between eastern and western markets that has been evident ever since.
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) Janghwa, Hongryeon
Directed by Ji-woon Kim
From its eerie opening credits – indistinct ripples ebbing over green wallpaper – to the plot twists and revelations at its climax, A Tale of Two Sisters is worthy of admission to the ranks of the best psychological horrors with greats such as The Innocents or The Others.
The storytelling is masterful in its construction, and the family home where the claustrophobic drama is played out is deeply atmospheric, with a kind of creeping Gothicism that enables deep shadow to drain warmth and light from the interiors, unnerving us with a dense assemblage of glass, wood, carpet and dark, William Morris wallpaper.
Ji-woon Kim’s film combines fairy-tale elements (wicked stepmother, haunted closet, old dark house) with incisive psychoanalytical insight into the human tragedy of loss, guilt, loneliness and frailty.
There is no lack of well-orchestrated shocks to compound the viewer’s disorientation, but the movie also contains aesthetically pleasing visuals contrasted with an atmosphere profound foreboding, fulfilling Ji-woon Kim’s asserted ambition of making a horror movie which is ‘both beautiful and terrifying’.
Oldboy (2003) Oldeuboi
Directed by Park Chan-Wook
This movie probably needs the least introduction, as even movie fans who have not yet dabbled in the dark worlds of Asian horror are aware of its cult-classic status.
The great Min-sik Choi, a Korean star since the movie Shiri in 1999, plays Dae-su, an ordinary working man who is inexplicably abducted and held prisoner for 15 years. He learns from the TV in his hotel-room prison that his wife has been murdered and he is the lead suspect.
Just as inexplicably he is suddenly released. He begins a relationship with a young sushi chef, Mi-do, and gets a call from a man claiming responsibility for his incarceration and telling him that he has five days to solve the mystery or Mi-do will also be executed.
Dae –su finds the location of his erstwhile prison and exacts violent retribution on his captors. As he begins to unravel the full extent of the conundrum he discovers the terrible reality of his predicament, and is driven to the brink of insanity and despair.
Min-sik Choi has made the leading role in ‘Oldboy’ his own (as demonstrated by the disastrous flop of the American remake starring Josh Brolin). With his shock of frizzy hair, desolate countenance and wounded gaze, Min-sik Choi was the embodiment of the existential pain at the core of Park’s tragic horror-thriller. As with all of the protagonists in Chan-wook Park’s infamous ‘Vengeance trilogy’ of films, Dae-su obsessive quest leads him further into darkness, but because of Choi’s extraordinary performance, we never lose sight of the humanity in a character so mercilessly goaded into violence.
Each of Park’s ‘Vengeance Trilogy’ movies is constructed in the style of a Jacobean Tragedy in which violence, madness and death consume the antagonists. ‘Old Boy’ in particular, is told with tremendous cinematic style. His flair for the grotesque is tempered by a striking sense of visual composition and design. Park’s work has heavily influenced western directors such as Quentin Tarantino, an ardent fan, but his particular touch allows for the pathos of the human condition to emerge even in its darkest moments, and we are sometimes encouraged to find ‘sympathy for the devil’.
Unmissable.
I Saw The Devil (2010) Ang-ma-reul bo-at-da
Directed by Kim Jee-woon
If revenge horror is your thing another Korean must-see film is I Saw The Devil (2010) Ang-ma-reul bo-at-da, directed by Kim Jee-woon. An ultra-violent revenge horror to add to his Gothic take, A Tale of Two Sisters, his action thriller A Bittersweet Life and his western (!) The Good, the Bad and the Weird. I Saw The Devil follows Kim Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun) a member of the Korean secret service whose girlfriend is brutally murdered and dismembered by a serial killer. A grim and deadly chase between the two begins which leads Soo-hyeon into the darkest abyss of the human mind. Kim Ji-woon has consistently proved that he can make an extraordinary movie no matter what genre.
Thirst (2009) Bakjwi
Directed by Park Chan-wook
The second in this list to be directed by Park Chan-Wook, but in this he steers away from the revenge genre and into Vampirism. As with several of his works (most recently The Handmaiden his adaptation of Susan Waters’ ‘Fingersmith’) Thirst is also inspired by European literature, namely by Émile Zola’s ‘Thérèse Raquin’. As ever Park Chan-Wook makes his version his own by wholly adapting it to his own culture. Thirst is a blood-drenched vampire film about, unexpectedly, a Roman Catholic priest. The priest is a deeply good man. He dies because he volunteered as a subject for a deadly medical experiment, but transfused with tainted blood, he wakes stricken with vampirism and is forced to abandon his ascetic ways.
He acts not out of a desire to do evil — but by a terrible need which awakes not only his thirst for blood but other kinds of carnality. The priest is powerfully attracted to the young wife of a childhood friend who is mistreated by her sick husband and his shrewish mother. Always willing he is to help the unfortunate, his mercy is inspired by this poor girl. She so grateful to him that she forgives anything, even the small detail of his vampirism. The priest fights against his new undead nature and tries to cause little harm, however, it seems he has taken on more than he bargained for when the girl proves to embrace their new status with gusto. Soon they’re so blood-soaked that the film almost tilts into gruesome black comedy.
The Host (2006) Gwoemul
Directed by Joon-ho Bong
The Han River which runs through Seoul is polluted by toxic chemicals poured in on the orders of a corrupt American scientist. Several years later, a gigantic mutated monster emerges from the water and begins wreaking havoc. The US military want to quarantine the public believing there may be some kind of virus present.
Gang-Du (played by Korean star Kang-ho Song) a slovenly kiosk attendant, finds hidden resources of courage as he marshals together his odd family to the rescue of his daughter, who has been taken by the creature and stored in its lair. Meanwhile, mass demonstrations take place against US military plans to release an anti-viral chemical called ‘Agent Yellow’.
The pleasure of The Host lies in its satisfying combination of effects-driven destruction and carnage that one might expect from a monster movie, married with a touching portrayal of a crazy and dysfunctional family rallying together in the face of adversity. This is no syrupy celebration of family values – the Park family’s constant bickering is played with a slapstick sense of humour accompanied by a storyline which highlights danger, self-sacrifice and the tragedy of loss.
Ultimately though, a monster movie stands or fails on the strength and originality of its ‘creature’ and in this aspect, Joon-ho Bong’s film does not disappoint.
Train to Busan (2016) Busanhaeng
Directed by Sang-ho Yeon
I’d be seriously surprised if any fan of Zombie horror hadn’t already seen S. Korea’s 2016 Train to Busan. As a zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out in the country the outbreak spreads onto a train leaving Seoul for Busan, compromising the safety of the passengers. However, unlike other zombie flicks, the character development, performances and cinematography in this film is outstanding.
Train To Busan is what World War Z should have been—a nightmarish vision of the end of the world, yet boasting an emotional core that the big-name, multi-million-dollar spectacle lacked. Without giving out spoilers, Train To Busan suggests that it is those who trample over others to save themselves who will ultimately lose out and that the survivors of horrors are only there because of the sacrifices of their fellow man. During our darkest days is the time that we most need to look out for each other. There’s good reason why it’s become the 8th highest grossing Korean horror movie of all time.
The Wailing (2016) Gok-seong
Directed by Hong-jin Na
The Wailing is a 2016 South Korean supernatural mystery horror film concerning a small village called Goksung where police officer Jong-Goo is called upon to investigate bizarre murders apparently caused by a disease which resembles a kind of ‘posession’. His partner relays gossip that a Japanese stranger, who lives in a secluded house in the mountains, is thought to be an evil spirit causing the spread of the murderous illness. Could a demon be responsible for bringing the sickness to Goksung?
Opening and closing with solemn invocations from the biblical book of Luke, and marked by moments of bizarre humour, The Wailing is a unique Asian concoction, blending various genre tropes to create a mixture that includes a disturbing yet comedic police procedural, a demonic possession, allowing interludes involving exorcisms, death-curse rituals and even the hint of a theme regarding occupation and colonialism. It’s a film you watch in a state of gathering dread —it will scare you, but because of its variety of moods the viewer is never quite on a sure footing, never confident in guessing what might happen next. In a modern horror movie, that is an increasingly rare quality.
The result is both an original horror movie, an occasionally funny possession flick but also a heart-breaking elegy for thwarted love and broken family bonds. The Wailing becomes a unique creation of its own, setting its terrible events against the gorgeous landscapes and mountains of South Korea.
Also recommended:
Acacia (2003) directed by Ki-hyung Park
Seam\ The Isle (2000) directed by Ki-duk Kim
The Red Shoes (2005) directed by Kim Yong-gyun
Hide and Seek (2013) directed by Huh Jung
Don’t Click (2012) directed by Kim Tae-kyung
