The list of horror movies to come along riding a wave of buzz – manufactured or otherwise – touting the project in question as “one of the scariest of all-time” is borderline infinite at this point, but Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum nonetheless states a better and stronger case than most.
Found footage is one of scary cinema’s most divisive gimmicks, but it’s not a stretch to call director Jung Bum-shik’s nightmare one of the very finest examples to ever come along. The plot is as perfunctory as it is self-explanatory; a livestreamer and a band of adrenaline junkies spent the night investigating the titular facility, so it wasn’t exactly groundbreaking on a narrative level.
However, when you consider that it was made for a shoestring $2 million and recouped that number 10 times over at the global box office, scored the highest-ever opening weekend for any Korean feature to release in the month of March, nabbed a 91 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating, and won many awards for its technical and artistic achievements, then it’s not difficult to justifiably name Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum as among the cream of the crop.
Even now, half a decade on from its original unveiling, a Reddit thread deeming it as such has found nothing but widespread support and backing. Even if you despise found footage with an unyielding and never-ending passion, it’s still nigh-on impossible to look away from Haunted Asylum, no matter how much you want to.
One of the outright scariest of all-time? Absolutely, but don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Published: Jul 24, 2023 02:09 am