Pyegyo

I watched this as a risk due to the fact there's no actual written reviews on here about this movie. I'm a huge fan of horror films especially from Asia. This one didn't disappoint. There's not a huge amount of jump scares, but what's really scary is the fact that what occurs in the movie is so realistic. Those things are based in reality on what happens in Korean prep schools. The horrific bullying and violence in schools got a little better during the pandemic, but it is now worse than it's ever been. That's what is truly scary, that the absolutely abhorrent and shocking behavior shown happens in real life, sometimes even worse than what was in the film. I did have an issue with how justice is served in the film towards the end, for some it may be very satisfying and will have no issues with it but for me I wanted even more based on how angry I felt at what happened to Miok. That's why I rated it 8/10.

Given my love of horror cinema and Asian cinema, then sitting down to watch the 2019 South Korean horror movie "Pyegyo" (aka "Closed School") was a given. Sure, I had never even heard about the movie prior to stumbling upon it by random chance here in 2025. But that hardly mattered as it was an Asian horror movie. So of course I opted to check out what director's Choi Hyo-Won and Myung-Hoon Oh had to offer.

Writer Lee Jin-Han put together a fair enough script, though I found it to be a bit on the generic side. I've watched more than my share of haunted school horror movies in the Asian cinema, so this wasn't exactly ground-breaking territory. And truth be told, then the movie's storyline just wasn't all that interesting, as there simply wasn't enough of scary things happening.

I was not familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. And while the script wasn't a stellar one, then the acting performances were, for the majority of the cast ensemble, actually fair.

"Pyegyo" was not a movie that was driven by an abundance of special effects. Sure, there were some, and they were adequate enough, but the movie might have benefitted from some visual eye candy at least, when the narrative was so bland and generic.

If you are a newcomer to South Korean horror cinema, then you might find "Pyegyo" as a scary movie. But as a seasoned horror veteran, this was a mere stroll in the park for me, and a rather bland one at that. There are far, far better horror movies to be enjoyed in the South Korean horror cinema.

My rating of director Choi Hyo-Won's 2019 horror movie "Pyegyo" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.