3 stars out of 5
Warning: I’ve got the MoviePass now, so some of my upcoming selections may be a little on the random side, as I attempt to get my money’s worth. In this case, the words “Haunted Asylum” jumped out at me, with a chaser of “abandoned” in the film’s description. In the pages of Weird NJ over the years, I’ve become fascinated with abandoned asylums (especially Woody Guthrie’s eventual “home,” Greystone, but that’s another story for another time). Supposedly Gonjiam was based on a real place. Hey, who knows, but good enough for a MoviePass check-in!
I did not do any additional research, though I hoped the movie was playing in Edgewater because it was good and not just because of the large Korean population in north Jersey. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Korean film before, actually, though I’ll eventually get around to Oldboy.)
Things started out promising, as a kind of modern spin on The Blair Witch Project. The crew of the Horror Times web series invites a few fans along to investigate disappearances at Gonjian, including mysterious locked room 402. The host and head of Horror Times thinks he can shatter online viewing records with this tale, and thus rake in beaucoup advertising bucks. Along for the ride are sexy Americanized Charlotte, bookish Ha-Joon, an edgy, jokey guy, and… frankly I couldn’t keep track of anyone else’s names because they all seemed to be variations on Sung or Park. As they broadcast live from Gonjian, maybe some of the spooky goings-on are fake — but maybe some are real!
Except, for a long time, nothing particularly scary happens in this movie, and I was getting increasingly frustrated (and a little sleepy). The action devolves into a lot of shrieking and screaming and yelling in dark rooms. Low budget or low creativity? It’s an abandoned asylum, show me some crazy ghosts!
Finally, toward the end, the fear factor amps up a tad, via some reliable tropes — eyes going black, speaking in tongues, someone weirdly standing in the corner, facing the wall (uh, hello again, Blair Witch). But if you’re looking for quality and quantity frights at the multiplex, A Quiet Place should still be your destination, not Gonjian.
I saw this movie last week.
It was pretty boring in the beginning. But in the latter part, I could not breathe because of the shocking scene and the extraordinary horror effect.