Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum: Terror Tourism

The six young fools in Jeong Beom-sik's Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum have decided to explore a cursed and abandoned psychiatric hospital that landed on CNN's Seven Freakiest Places in the World. On their way to the bloodcurdling Room 402, they check out the Director's Office, the Lab, the Shower Room, and the Bathing Room, and the Storage Room where they find such ominous relics as a photo of former inmates, some loose syringe needles, a creepy clown doll, a dead chicken, and a discarded wig. The graffiti too sends a clear message... Get out! Yet none of them pay attention to the signs until too late. Instead, harnessed up with two-way cameras that allow YouTube viewers (a.k.a. us, the audience) to see what they're seeing as well as their reaction shots. The goal? To get to one million viewers. The cost? Oh, maybe their lives.

But just how scary does it get? Is someone playing a trick on someone? Are there vengeful ghosts that have to do with war crimes or mental illness? Is all the footage coming from the participants and the cameras with motion sensors that one of the crew stalled earlier that day? How much does the guy at the control panel in the tent on the hill really know about what's going on? After all, HQ is having issues all its own and that pair of dirty underwear someone tied to a branch doesn't turn out to be then helpful landmark everyone though it would be.

We never get to the truth behind all the mysterious happenings and while we see the YouTube viewership climb well beyond 900 thousand, we never see it hit the goal. Not that it matters — it being this movie and the reality show that it contains.

Kim Ki-Young's Top 10 Movies

The films of Kim Ki-young reflect a different South Korea than the one I learned about in the movies of Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Hong Sang-soo. I suppose you'll hear echoes most clearly in Kim Ki-duk's filmography which is similarly focused on disturbed psychodynamics but even so, I was not prepared for the zaniness that is Kim Ki-young. Best known for The Housemaid which more or less set a template for many of the movies that would follow, he also made some fine films atypical of that landmark flick, and ones which I happen to prefer. It's hard to believe Yangsan Province has been so summarily dismissed because I find it magical.

10. Woman of Fire: Proof that a director's quintessential film may not be the best of the bunch. (Which isn't to say it's not good.)

9. Iodo: This strange murder-mystery is set on an island run by women who go to extremes when competing for men.

8. Insect Woman: Arguably, the best of Kim's reworking of The Housemaid.

7. Killer Butterfly: This may be the weirdest in Kim's filmography with talking skeletons and 2,000-year-old urine both memorably featured.

6. Promise of the Flesh: A woman on her way to prison has the train ride of her life.

5. The Housemaid: This classic Korean psychosexual melodrama features many plot elements that Kim would revisit again and again.

4. Woman of Water: The ill-treated, silent female lead is a trope of cinema. Kim's take gives her voice though and the final message is a powerful one.

3. The Sea Knows: Set in Japan, this military flick finds a Korean soldier struggling to survive with some help from his Japanese girlfriend.

2. Yangsan Province: A love triangle ends in disaster for government official's son, a poor widow's son, and the woman they both love.

1. Transgression: This one takes Kim's extremist tendencies into a monastery where three monks are battling it out for the top spot.

Also by Kim Ki-young: Beasts of Prey

Private Eye: Snoop Gets Major Scoop

Jang Kwang-su (Ryu Deok-hwan) is a gifted medical student who chances upon a dead body that he uses to further his skill set as a surgeon. Hong Jin-ho (Hwang Jung-min) makes his living by taking scandalous photos of women having affairs then getting those pics published in the local paper, no doubt with salacious copy. So when Jang realizes that his practice corpse is the son of a political dignitary, he naturally enlists Hong to track down the murderer. Why shouldn't a photojournalist who stalks down unfaithful spouses be able to track down a serial killer? Okay, I'll admit that's a bit of a jump but if you're willing to take it, Park Dae-min's Private Eye is highly entertaining.

In supporting roles, neither Oh Dal-su nor Yun Je-mun may be giving the performance of a lifetime as a shady military officer and an even shadier circus performer but even at 70 percent capacity, they keep the action moving. Vastly more effective is Uhm Ji-won who plays an inventor who aspires to be the greatest scientist in Korean history and in most movies would also be doubling as a love interest but here is improbably but delightfully not. She may have longings for Hong but she's infinitely more committed to astronomy and James Bond-worthy gadgetry than she is to snagging her man. Anyway, she's smart to set her sights elsewhere since so many of this movie's men aren't interested in women at all. I won't add any spoilers now but I will say that what they desire instead may not be what you first suspect.

P.S. If you're wondering why the younger trapezist looks familiar, that's because actress Kim Hyang-gi grew up to star in the Along with the Gods franchise.