It’s been a while since I indulged in some supernatural Asian films, so I decided it was time to get a fix after several titles were suggested on my streaming services. This is just the first 3 of about 9 that I’ve added to my watchlists, so expect to see me covering more as we move closer to Halloween. For now, let’s see if this trio worked for me.
DELETED (2023)
If you need a quick Asian ghost girl throwback film, this 63-minute movie feels like a love letter to Ju-on and Ringu.
This time, the ghost girl is captured in a piece of footage during the filming of a horror movie. A young editor is tasked with trimming the running time of the film, but she likes the footage that includes the mysterious figure in the background. However, the producers keep ordering her to cut it out.
Each time she does, whichever person demanded it be removed is visited by the ghost girl and dies. The kills are as paint-by-number as ghost girl movie kills gets, with the best moment being a dude stumbling upon a victim that is still alive but has had his face peeled off.
That’s the one aspect that could have been played up with each death, because the peeled face directly relates to the ghost girl, whose goal in life was to be in a movie.
For the final confrontation, the filmmakers barely resisted having the ghost girl crawl out of the editing monitor—she crawls over it instead. She also takes it upon herself to part the long black hair hanging in front of her face for full exposure. This bitch really wanted to be on screen, but once we see her face it’s obvious why she didn’t make the cut…although, she could have been cast in the horror movie as, you know…a ghost girl.
The oddest aspect of this movie is that we learn what led up to her deaths, but we never find out how she died. Even one of the characters says it’s not clear if it was suicide, an accident, or murder. Weird.
THE GHOST STATION (2022)
This 80-minute Korean horror film is another nod to turn of the millennium Asian ghost girl horror, basically transferring the plots of both Ju-on and Ringu into one movie with a horde of ghost children at a train station. This one is derivative with a messy mystery, so I actually liked Deleted better.
A journalist becomes obsessed with doing a story on a series of mysterious deaths at a train station, and with the help of a male colleague she begins to investigate the incidents. She’s already in hot water with her boss for what appears to be an incident of outing a trans woman in one of her reports, which has led to a lawsuit. It’s an odd side story that doesn’t go very far.
My new favorite kill scene position.
There are various deaths, sightings of little ghost children that look like zombies, and a bizarre detail that involves an orphanage, children in a well (sigh), the train station being used as a grave for a mass murder that has led to these ghost children holding a grudge (they literally call it a grudge), and those who learn the truth needing to pass the curse on in order to save themselves.
Unfortunately, despite being a total rip-off, the film simply lacks the tension, atmosphere, and scares of the two iconic movies it’s trying to mimic.
GONJIAM: HAUNTED ASYLUM (2018)
This is just an Asian horror version of an overplayed plot of numerous U.S. found footage films; a group of ghost hunters enters an abandoned asylum that’s reputedly haunted.
As usual, there’s backstory: mass deaths of inmates, a crazy asylum director that simply disappeared, a particular room that is cursed. And, also as usual, there a whole bunch of trekking through the woods with cameras, setting up monitors in the asylum, exploring a location sprinkled with creepy items like dolls and wheelchairs, and screaming in terror at things the audience doesn’t get to see.
However, the tedium shifts into terror late into the film after the ghost hunters decide to do some sort of ritual with candles.
As the specters come out of the woodwork, there’s a lot of chaos and it’s often dark and hard to see anything, but there’s also Silent Hill level ghouls, paranoia, suspense, isolation, and claustrophobia as the ghost hunters experience an onslaught of intense attacks. The final act definitely redeemed this one for me.
