Friday Night Movie: Whispering Corridors

When I first started this blog, I used to do Friday movie reviews and what better time to start them off than now. Today I am reviewing the 1998 Korean horror film, Whispering Corridors.

Native Title: 여고괴담
Release Date: May 30, 1998
Director: Kim Ji Hoon, Park Ki Hyung

Writer: Park Ki Hyung, In Jun Ok
Genre: Horror
Starring: Kim Gyu Ri, Lee Mi Yeon, Choi Kang Hee. Rest of the cast can be found here.

Whispering Corridors came out after the South Korean censorship rules were lifted, and is largely considered as the kick-off to Korea’s summer horror movie trend. It became a hit and was ranked third highest grossed film of the year. It has four sequels, with a fifth one scheduled for this year (maybe?). Set at an all-girls school that’s said to be haunted by a former student who committed suicide there, Whispering Corridors follows the students and faculty after a teacher is found dead at the school and the rumors that start to spread about what happened.

Non-spoiler review: If you are into atmospheric slower-paced ghost stories, this will be a good movie for you. That happens to be one of my favorite types in the horror genre, so I was pretty into this. Most of the movie is spent developing the story and the backstory of the ghost that haunts the school, as well as shedding light on the way that the students are treated by the (mostly male) faculty. I don’t think this will be for everyone, however, because the pacing is rather slow, and largely not a lot happens in regards to the horror/paranormal aspect. While the ending has a bit more action there’s just not a lot going on as a whole. That being said, I do think that if you are into horror and you are into Korean entertainment or movies this is one that you should definitely check out because of the impact it had on the industry if you have the chance.

I’m going to go into a more in-depth review for the rest of the post and will include spoilers. If you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read any further.

I know I said above that the pacing is slow, but the movie does start off fairly quickly with the escalation of the first death. It still focused a lot on the atmosphere and there was a quiet build towards it, and I was intrigued by the basic premise and how things were going to play out. I don’t normally read too much into any movie that I go into purely because I don’t want to be spoiled and form my own opinion. Because of this, I only knew the bare minimum going in and so it was unexpected for me to see how much of the movie focused on the unfair treatment of the students and the harsh realities of the educational system, while the actual ghost story plays a secondary role.

One of the only things I generally stay away from in dramas/movies are stories that revolve around school bullying. It’s a mixture of reasons dealing with issues in my past but also mostly how it’s usually handled. Most of the time they are super heightened and portray all involved as actual psychopaths that never have any consequences from either the adults around or the writer themselves (they will always get an unnatural redemption arc and all the rage magically disappears). It’s also unnerving when the bullying deals with children/younger adults, and I just generally can’t tolerate it the way I can with other darker subjects.

I found the bullying in this movie, however, pushed away from the standard. It was much more subdued and realistic, with the real psychological and violent bullying coming from the teachers - the adults who were old enough to be well aware of their actions. This was intentional, as the movie really leaned more into showing those darker aspects in what seems like even more than what the ghost does. The teachers are brutal in their punishments. While it is true that Jin Ju was bullied by the students, we see that part of the escalation and motivation to keep up with it was pressure from the teachers who aided in the mind games and created the situation. The need for the students to be on top and stay out of trouble outweighed their rationality and they were easily manipulated by those adults who were supposed to be teaching them.

I’ll talk more about my feelings on the twist in a bit, but I wanted to briefly touch on a part of the twist that I surprised me more than the main part. Suicide tends to be a driving force in a lot of horror but more specifically in Asian horror. It isn’t uncommon to see a movie deal with it. For most of the movie, this is the main subject. Jin Ju was said to have committed suicide at the school, the homeroom teacher is found hanging (even though we see that she was in fact attacked by the ghost), and later after the fight between Jung Sook and Ji Oh, Jung Sook is also found having committed suicide. The reveal of how Jin Ju actually dies and how it’s not suicide sheds a different picture on everything that she has done beforehand. When before you think she is a vengeful ghost because she was so emotionally scarred from the abuse that she committed suicide, she’s not. At the core, she was sad that she didn’t get to be a normal student, and have normal friendships. That’s the true reason behind her posing as students every year - to carry out that normalcy and finally find a friend and that comfort.

The twist of who Jin Ju really was just wasn’t that surprising to me. The movie was a little too on the nose trying to get the audience to believe the one possessed by the ghost or playing any part in the deaths was Jung Sook. I caught on pretty quickly that instead of suffering from any paranormal issues, she was suffering from real-life consequences of depression and the pressures of her school life. It didn’t take me out of the movie (especially given the additional part of the twist that I mentioned before). It was a little weird that no one was able to figure out that Jin Ju just kept showing up to class looking the same? Although this could be just another point to tell the audience how bad at almost every aspect the faculty is that it took them long to figure it out. There’s a part where Mr Oh is talking to Eun Young after she is trying to get in contact with her mom about the bells, and he makes a point of telling her how bad of a friend she was for not talking to her and essentially forgetting her, when she is the only one who has remembered her.

In the end, it was far from a bad way to spend a night watching this movie and I’m glad that I finally got around to watching it. The kills, while not as many, were good and the general vibe stayed eerie and creepy throughout. The gore level is basically zero, and while there are creepier parts I think this might be a good option for someone who can’t handle too much horror or spooky well but still want something a step up. It is dated, so if you are looking for something HD and filled with CGI that’s not going to happen here, but honestly it doesn’t need it and for the most part that aspect of the movie is the part that aged well.

I read some reviews and most of them mentioned things that were to be expected about the pacing (and sadly the assholes of the world getting mad at Korean names being…Korean), but it seems like on the whole it’s got a pretty even rating. I did notice a few people talking about how they couldn’t understand how this was so popular in Korea. I’m sure some of the success was the timing of the movie, as it was primed to do well being in the position of being one of the first movies after the restrictions were lifted, but more than that this movie dives deeper into a subject that most of Korean society can understand and feel some connection to. I think that really resonated with a lot of the audience that watched this and that’s why it became big. If you have access to it and a free night, give it a watch.

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