25/25
The crew of a horror web series travels to an abandoned asylum for a live broadcast. They soon encounter much more than they expected as they move deeper into the nightmarish old building. The filmmakers were denied permission from the South Korean government to film in an actual hospital, so the scenes set in Gonjiam were actually filmed at the National Maritime High School Busan, where the production team strictly followed the hospital’s floor plans to recreate the exact same exteriors and hallways. Charlotte keeps looking to the side when the crew is in front of the hospital. She apparently responds when she smiles at anyone. References Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007). I’m usually critical of found-footage horror, as it’s usually unnecessary and doesn’t add anything to the story. Usually, found footage movies do better than “regular” movies. This is not the case with Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. With the new cutting-edge technology and the reason why the actors know how to use the camera, it serves this movie’s purpose perfectly. There is a bit of shaky camming and other “effects” that you usually see in found footage, which I think ruins the movie. The story itself is pretty standard, 7 young “ghost hunters” go to an old mental institution, mostly for the sake of views and profit, which makes it more realistic than other similar movies. The pace of the movie is pretty slow and nothing happens in the first half, but it’s worth it, I originally wanted to give this a 6, but considering that this is a horror movie and one of the scariest in its subgenre! I’ve ever seen, I raised it to a 7. If you want a scary movie without too much plot, this movie is for you.