Director: Kim Hyun-jun
Year: 2024
Country: South Korea
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After a devastating accident, a woman is accidentally killed while on vacation with her friends, and the incident is covered up, but when the spirit returns and starts to torment her friends forces them to rely on a spirit exorcist with a dark secret tied to her past to help free the deadly spirit.
Review:
Generally, there's a lot going for this one. Among the better positives featured here is an intriguing storyline that incorporates a slew of seemingly disparate elements that are usually found in quite cliché setups into a somewhat chilling narrative. The main focus is initially set up to be the one girl, only to have an accident switch perspective on everything shortly after this, turning the perspective onto her friends, which becomes all the more suspicious when their relationship is revealed, which taints how these earlier interactions played out. With the secondary storyline involving the medium trying to solve the case with the police officers, it creates a simple enough storyline that develops into a solid mix of supernatural mysticism and traditional police forensic investigations to get this going nicely enough.
With this in place, the film manages to work nicely enough in terms of its genre setpieces. The series of ghostly visions and hallucinations that take place here are nowhere near the top of the genre, but the scenes of the spirit making the boyfriend believe that she's not dead or causing her other friend to believe she has been targeted by an otherworldly spirit in her house offer up some generally fun moments. The latter half, where the exorcist comes into play, offers up a more spiritualistic approach where his ability to see spirits around him and confront them means there's a solid series of encounters, not just dealing with the mother in a flashback or the big encounter with the spirit inside the police station where everything comes out about the relationship between everyone. Featuring some solid lighting effects to show the spirit enacting its revenge in these scenes, there are some fun elements present.
There are some issues with this one that are present. One of the biggest drawbacks here is the confusing and scattershot storyline that sets up elements nicely but also has quite a lot going on. The main idea of having the girl get killed and the spirit come back for revenge against the perpetrators has a simplistic quality that works fine enough, but trying to add more weight to this story ends up confusing matters more than anything. Adding in a twin sister to the dead girl that happens to also be an exorcist would be fine if it was revealed earlier. As it comes out during the final stages of the big confrontation in the police station, the implication that this important piece of information detailing why these figures are together gets lost because it makes no sense to come out at the point it does makes little impact.
As well, there's also the big issue with the film's pacing that also causes some issues here. The odd touch of using her death at the very start only to then try to make this strange exorcist the main character after this introduction to the two friends is a strange one, by suddenly trying to make a mysterious stranger wandering around the countryside performing mystic practices the new lead when there was an investigation going on into the death to begin with. Not only that, but the need to then try to backtrack and add on the backstory of not just him but also the second medium ties up the plotline so the few attack scenes of the spirit come off sparingly in the running time as these converging storylines leave the film to end up feeling watchable but formulaic compared to other genre efforts.
Overview: ***/5
Fun enough for what it is but also let down by some big factors, this one is a mostly serviceable entry in the genre but never rises above that due to its drawbacks. It’s mainly worthwhile for diehard Asian horror fans or the most undiscerning viewers of the style, as most others out there won’t be as forgiving of its issues.
This review was originally published on Asian Movie Pulse and is gratefully reprinted with their cooperation.
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