22/46

The crew of a horror web series travels to an abandoned asylum for a live broadcast. As she delves deeper into an old nightmare, she soon discovers much more than she thought possible. The filmmakers were unable to obtain permission from the South Korean government to film in a real hospital, so the scenes set in Gonjiam were actually filmed at the National Naval High School in Busan, with the production team sticking closely to the hospital’s layout. They recreated the exact same exterior and hallways. Charlotte keeps looking to the side as the group stands in front of the hospital. She obviously reacts by smiling at who it is. References Return to the House on Haunted Hill (2007). I usually criticize found footage horror because it’s usually pointless and doesn’t add anything to the story. Found footage movies are usually better than “normal” movies. That’s not the case with Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. With the latest cutting edge technology and the reason the actors know how to use the camera, this movie serves its purpose brilliantly. There is a little shaky camera and other «effects» that you normally see in found footage, which I think ruins the movie. The story itself is pretty standard: 7 young «ghost hunters» enter an old mental institution, mainly for the sake of ratings and profit, which makes the movie more realistic than other similar movies. The pace of the movie is pretty slow and nothing really happens in the first half, but it’s worth it! I was originally going to give it a 6, but since it’s a horror movie and one of the scariest of its subgenre I’ve ever seen, I upgraded it to a 7. If you want a scary movie without too much of a plot, this is the movie for you.