Premise: A group of amateur paranormal thrill-seekers live-stream as they explore an abandoned asylum and come to believe it really is haunted.
I’m a simple man. Put some cameras in the hands of a few people, leave them in a scary place one night, and I’ll watch it. That’s exactly what Gonjiam is and I loved it. My found footage tolerance is higher than a lot of people’s, so I don’t need a found footage film to do much special. Gonjiam isn’t all that different from, say, Grave Encounters. The main difference is that it’s Korean and is laughing at the premise less. Grave Encounters starts silly and makes a turn. Gonjiam is closer to what I love in horror. It’s a group of people who think they know what they are doing then get outmatched.
It’s a lot of fun seeing how everyone gets outmatched by the hauntings. Like Charlotte (Moon Ye-won) starting as someone proudly declaring how many of the scariest places on earth she’s been too then getting completely spooked. I like the idea that this is tied to a live webcast. It explains why there’s so much camera coverage, of course. It also creates more motivation than a lot of these movies have. It explains why they would keep pushing forward despite all the reasons they should have left. And the stinger at the end that not that many people watched, believing it was a hoax, was a nice dash of futility to send the audience out on.
Mostly though, I just liked that the movie was scary. It got me second-guessing every creak and sound in my apartment for the night after watching. The film escalates at a satisfying rate. I got a little confused about their path going through the asylum, since they kept revisiting the same rooms, but I’m sure it makes sense if I went back and checked.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
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