Directed by Park Ki-hyeong
Starring (get ready) Choi Se-yeon, Kim Gyu-ri, Lee Mi-yeon, Park Yong-soo and Kim Yu-seok
I've been putting off this review for a while. Not because I dislike the movie or anything; Whispering Corridors, while it has its faults, is one of those horror films that anyone should see sometime in their life just for the sheer level of patience and atmosphere that it employs. But the story of this flick is not one that lends itself to an entertaining review. Since my success rate at those has been hovering somewhere around the 22nd percentile these days...what the fuck, I'll go for it.
Stripped down to its bare essentials, this movie is about a group of students at an all-girls' school in South Korea dealing with a haunting. It shares this theme with its many thematic "sequels" (and there are four of 'em), all of which explore this theme in a very different way with a new director and group of characters. From what I can gleam at the ever-accurate Wikipedia, this was actually quite the important movie in South Korea as one of the first films released after the military dictatorship subsided. Hence, the harshly authoritarian tone of the school's teachers, which, if I was moderately intelligent, would be meant to represent the harshness of the formerly controlling government or something. But you don't pay me for those details. Let's get to the show.
Ladies and gentlemen, we've got another movie in the "get the hell going" category here, with a murder scene gracing our presence within the first five minutes. The victim? An old bat teacher at the Jookran High School for Girls, who we see get attacked by an unseen force before being found hanging in the schoolyard. Creepy stuff, and it gets the ball rolling very well. Our ACTUAL star characters are two of the young students, and the contrast between them makes for quite the interesting plot device. Folks, without exaggeration, Choi Se-yeon deserved award consideration for her performance in this film; I can't say I'm familiar with her filmography or anything, but her portrayal of the movie's "timid outsider" character is just simply top notch. Kim Gyu-ri isn't far behind, with her character being a talented painter whose creations gradually take on a more macabre tone as the weird incidents begin to pile up. Really, though, just about everyone in this movie is top notch.
For most of the movie, we watch this class as they deal with their dictator-like teacher (Park Yong-soo). For anyone out there who thought that an authority figure couldn't be more hardcore than R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, think again. Yeah, this dude chews scenery every time he's onscreen, but it's damn necessary, entertaining, and at times downright riveting stuff. At the end of it all, this IS a horror film, but there isn't much in the way of death or blood or goblins. It's more all about the mood, the sheer oppressiveness that the director creates with the claustrophobia of the school and the rumors and gossip that the students partake in. Hence the title. Deep stuff, I know.
One more note for those considering whether or not to check this movie out for the first time. I know I've talked a lot about pace in past reviews, but it's doubly important here, because everything here builds up ULTRA-SLOW. There are long passages in the movie that casual viewers of Asian horror will think are leading to absolutely nowhere, and the first time I watched this flick, I spent the first 45 minutes desperately trying to think of something else to do. Take my word for it - all of that build actually does lead somewhere, and the final 20 minutes or so of Whispering Corridors qualify as electric stuff. Suffice to say, this is the height of what is affectionately referred to as the "Ghost School Trilogy" (of five films - don't ask).
Oh, you want a rating? *** 1/2 out of ****. It dodges the perfect rating just because the middle section goes on a BIT too long, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a horror flick from the past 20 years or so with a better atmosphere than this.
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