South Korean Horror

Lili’s Pick: Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Lanie’s Pick: Alive

In case it hasn’t already been made abundantly clear, I’ll warn you that my sister and I are huge horror nerds with an unquenchable thirst for scary movies. Thankfully there’s an almost endless supply to consume. There are the protein-rich, slow burns of terror, with layers of story that can be unwrapped and analyzed over and over again. Then there are those quick bites of fright, packed with so much horror and chaos that a single watch is all you can stomach. On our boundless quest to watch every horror film that we can, I must say that the international selections we’ve viewed have been my absolute favorite. From Battle Royale to The Host, from REC to The Night Eats the World, our exploration of foreign horror has proven to be thrilling, inspiring, and horrifying, in ways that have shocked my decadent, Western sensibilities. When it comes to the most terrifying of cinema, Spanish horror currently reigns supreme, but South Korean horror comes in at a very close second. The South Korean horror classic Train to Busan partly inspired this evening’s selections—with its incredible use of their advanced railroad system, combined with a distinctly non-American non-reliance on guns, it makes for the most exciting and unsettling zombie viewing experience. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum and #Alive were both dedicated to modernizing their scares even more, placing technology at the center of both terrifying narratives. #Alive, not to be confused with the undoubtedly shittier, American, Teen Wolf-version Alone, almost compelled me to purchase a drone, a selfie stick, and highly expensive gaming software, just in case my wifi stays in tact during a zombie outbreak, given how effective all of these things prove to be. Some may consider the dependence on technology to be a little heavy-handed, with its entirely ubiquitous presence, but I found it to be remarkably innovative. Only being slightly triggered by the forced isolation of a deadly disease, then the eventual loss of power, heat, and water experienced by both the film’s protagonist and myself, last week, I had the most fun one can have while being extremely stressed out. Whether or not you’re impressed by this film’s take on zombies, I think, at the very least, you’ll appreciate how they were able to find a productive and positive use of social media, because, like, how is that even possible? Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum took a different, much less optimistic approach to their use of technology and social media, as it follows a group of overconfident adventure YouTubers who venture into an abandoned mental institution, who stream the entire ordeal live. Imagine this horror scenario: would you rather spend the night in a haunted insane asylum, or spend the night with... vloggers 😳 Listen… this movie was really fucking scary. It spends a lot of time teasing you and torturing you with moments of merciless unease before anything corporeal appears, but that makes it all the more effective. This is how you do atmospheric terror, Lake Mungo. It’s the kind of diligently agonizing movie that makes me feel nostalgic for those that I watched in middle school—heart racing and muscles tensing, huddled around a laptop with a friend who’d acquired it from the internet, legally, of course... The GoPro camera angles and flashes were disorienting at times, but the moments of still, dark, quiet were even more nauseating to me. Nothing was entirely innovative or inspired, but it didn’t need to be. It’s purely here to scare the shit out of you, and scare the shit out of you it will.