Korean horror films began to be noticed more internationally after the back-to-back successes of "Phone" (2002) and "A Tale of the Two Sisters" (2003). Since then, there had been more Korean horror films which gained acclaim like "Thirst" (2009), "I Saw the Devil" (2010), "Train to Busan" (2016) and "The Wailing" (2016). Last year's horror hit "Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum" (2018) was a found-footage film, and now this new one followed suit with found-footage but with a twist.
Mi-jung (Seo Ye-ji) was a troubled young film director who wanted to create the best horror film ever. When she heard of a 10-year old haunted horror film supposedly filmed by a ghost, she wanted desperately to get her hands on a copy and watch it. The director of the older film, Jae-hyun (Jin Sun-kyu), now looking very disheveled and spooked out of his mind, warned her to forget about his cursed film. However, the more she was warned, the more obsessed Mi-jung became about watching it, even if it meant presented a clear danger to her sanity and her life.
You know those horror films when the characters annoyed you no end by doing stupid things which no sane person would do? They hear a strange scary noise, and they go outdoors (or go down the basement or up the attic) to investigate what it was, while the audience is screaming to tell them to get out of there. Well, this movie is one whole film where the protagonist Mi-jung was doing one inexplicably crazy action after the other all for the purpose of locating and watching this one sick video.
Actually, there came a point when you already cannot tell what was reality from Mi-jung's nightmares or from Jae-hyun's paranoia. In fact, the editing was done so that events happening for real and the events in the two films (both Jae-hyun's original and Mi-jung's version) were merged into one indistinguishable continuity especially when Mi-jung included herself as a character in her film. It created a confusing illusion like that of a hall of mirrors where images play vile tricks on your brain.
At first this movie was all about atmosphere, dread and jump scares, thanks to Mi-jung's foolish decisions which led her into dangerous situations. Some pretty graphic hard-core gore would only figure in director Kim Jin-won's scare arsenal towards the end. There was a B-movie vibe to the whole affair, with the actors (even the two leads) performing rather amateurishly. While the premise might have looked good on paper, the final film did not completely deliver on its promise because of its deficient set-up and poor pacing of scares. 4/10.
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