Gonjiam

2018 Directed by Jung Bum-shik

Horror Marathon 2024 Day 8 Film 16

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

A horror club goes out to a haunted asylum to seek out the truth behind some disappearances... and more views. The found footage setup is very much Blair Witch Project, but the formulaic plot mixes it with the reality tv ghost hunters genre. The first part of the film does a good job of telling the in world internet audience all of the mythology of the place without it seeming too much like an info dump. They setup cameras in various parts of the Asylum, with small jump scares and shimmers of possible figures lingering outside the frames.

All of this fits in with the over-reactions of the scares- a doll, a wooden box, a forbidden room- seeming a bit silly, but readily becoming a spectacle for the in world viewership. The made for the web feel of the footage is nice, sometimes glitching in and out of the livestream before finally a shift happens in the film where the characters are actually experiencing fear. The film handles this well- with most performances shifting with the false acting vs the feeling that shit has really hit the fan.

I don't usually like found footage horror because of how shaky and grainy most of them are, but this one reveals more to what's happening without losing the tension of "what the hell was that?" I especially liked some of the sequences where the pacing jumps and a dragged off body seems to go out in a flash. It's effective in creating a spooky atmosphere without much gore or eww factor- like a bit of an amusement ride to watch without any of the excess of being overwritten. That said I would have liked a bit more variety in the plot to differentiate it from other found footage movies.