Summary
The South Korean take on the found-footage horror genre borrows from some of its forbears, but still manages to relieve us of our bejesuses when it counts.
The Blair Witch Project has a lot to answer for. While not the first to use a mockumentary format, it popularised the faux found-footage motif used in everything from Cloverfield to Ghost Hunters style shows on cable. GONJIAM: HAUNTED ASYLUM (곤지암) owes more to the latter, and that’s just one of the reasons it stands out in a crowded marketplace of imitators.
While it’s more difficult to create a truly viral prank in 2018, the line between fact and fiction in director and co-writer Jung Bum-shik’s film adds fuel to the fire. In 2012, CNN named Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital in Gyeonggi, South Korea one of the 7 freakiest places on the planet. Legend follows that patients started dying in the 1970s, and a closure soon followed.
In the film, a camera crew led by captain Ha-joon (Wi Ha-joon) is taken into the abandoned hospital. Each member of the crew is rigged with small cameras to capture their experience and reactions. As a point of difference to other similar films, this one is being livestreamed to hundreds of thousands of viewers. What the crew doesn’t know is that Ha-joon has concocted a hoax to boost viewers. However, it soon becomes evident that even Ha-joon doesn’t know the full extent of the real scares waiting for them.
If you’ve seen anything in the genre before, you know that it isn’t long before things start going horribly wrong. The trick in this more cynical and social media savvy age is to make the jumps seem genuine. The intense point-of-view technique makes every loud bang or corner turn as terrifying as actually walking through an abandoned building late at night. Dead chicken carcasses and strange ping pong sounds add to the surreality of it all.
Surveillance cameras silently panning through empty rooms, for example, is a legitimately creepy effect. Randomly failing technology occasionally takes us out of the moment: “This is giving me a headache,” remarks one livestream viewer, and they’re not wrong. Yet this too becomes part of the rhythm. By the time shit starts getting freaky in the final act, with objects flying and doors being slammed left, right and centre, Jung Bum-shik has done a wonderful job of enveloping the audience in a self-contained spook bubble.
The cast of mostly unknowns is essential for selling this as a documentary. Some of the performances tread a little too close to acting rather than reacting, although Yoo Je-Yoon as a constantly nervous FX guy speaks for us all. When the otherwise intrepid Charlotte (Moon Ye-Won) somewhat incongruously flips her lid, the comical side is offset by the nervous laughter the audience shares.
There are shots lifted straight out of The Blair Witch Project, including the discovery of a companion standing alone in a remote corner. Yet the claustrophobic chaos of the final 15 minutes, set in the enigmatic ‘Room 402’ of the asylum, is such a white knuckle ride that these ‘tributes’ scarcely seem to matter. What GONJIAM: HAUNTED ASYLUM lacks in overall originality of concept, it more than makes up for in moment-to-moment execution.
2018 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Jung Bum-shik | WRITERS:Jung Bum-shik, Park Sang-min | CAST: Wi Ha-Joon, Park Ji-Hyun, Oh Ah-Yeon, Moon Ye-Won, Park Sung-Hoon, Lee Seung-Wook, Yoo Je-Yoon | DISTRIBUTOR: JBG Pictures (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 April 2018 (AUS)
