Hotel Leikeu

As I sat down in 2023 to watch the 2020 South Korean horror movie "Hotel Leikeu" (aka "Lingering", though I think "Hotel Lake" would have been a more appropriate translation given the name of the hotel in the movie), I had never actually heard about the movie. I stumbled upon it by random luck, and given my fascination with the Asian cinema and horror cinema in general, of course I opted to watch this movie.

Writer and director Yoon Een-Kyoung didn't exactly manage to impress me with the script and storyline for "Hotel Leikeu". It was a somewhat slow paced and rather monotonous storyline, which offered next to nothing in terms of proper horror. There were a couple of attempts at jump scares, but they didn't really play out all that well. And with the scenes that show ghostly visages and such, writer and director Yoon Een-Kyoung leaves much to be desired, because once a ghostly visage is show the scene ends and the story moves on to something else entirely. So there are a lot of questions left with the audience, and a sense of 'why even bother showing that when you're not following up on it?'.

The acting performances in the movie were good, despite the fact that the actresses and actors had very little solid material to work with. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but they definitely managed to put on fair enough performances.

Visually then you're not in for anything grand. There are some special effects throughout the course of the 101 minutes that the movie ran for. But don't get your hopes up for anything impressive or over-the-top.

For a horror movie, and an Asian horror movie at that, then "Hotel Leikeu" was a walk in the park. Nothing scary here actually. And that was somewhat disappointing.

While I now have watched the movie, I doubt I will ever return to watch it a second time, because the storyline just doesn't have all that much appeal or contents. And if you enjoy Asian horror cinema, then there are far more enjoyable horror movies readily available.

My rating of "Hotel Leikeu" lands on a four out of ten stars.

Wanting the best for her friends' daughter, a woman decides to take her to a remote hotel in the countryside to help out her aunt who runs it, but the longer they stay there they become convinced that something is wanting the girl forcing her to discover the secret connection with it's past to save her.

Overall, the film manages to get quite a lot right. One of its better aspects is the films' ability to offer up a heartwarming story at the center between the two girls despite not being related. Doing the journey as a favor for her friend, the bond that develops, as a result, is impressively handled as it's quite possible to believe they are related through the interactions and protective nature that forms here as she tries to keep the girl out of trouble. Once we're aware of the protective and motherly focus at the center of the film, the slow emergence of the horror elements towards the daughter becomes all the more frightening. Those horror elements are another enjoyable and entertaining aspect present here. Starting slowly with the odd disembodied creaking noise or whisper in the darkness, a discovery about the past connections to the hotel and the payoff to a series of innocent children's games provides a nice framework for the later scenes of the spirit lingering around the hotel. The constant appearance of the spirit through several decent jump-scares do help this even more with the attack on the spiritualist she calls in to help out or the search through the darkened ruins of the hotel basement, as does the spirited finale which adds some life and some decent gore to this one, altogether giving this one some positive aspects. That said, there are a few issues throughout here. The main problem is the general routine-ness and overly familiar feeling brought up, featuring yet another in a long list of films about black-haired female ghosts targeting innocent people. There's nothing new to the formula or has a clever twist, it's simply running through the same storyline beats in a new locale which is about the only original feature on display here, which goes to show the level of creativity present since even using the location of a hotel doesn't offer a lot of creativity or ingenuity in the film. The other problem is the general lack of apathy created when it's not centered around the two girls. There's very little of any interest derived from the investigation of what happened in the hotels' past that connects her to the history of what happened and most of the side characters adding in doing so serve no purpose in the film that couldn't have been done without them anyway rendering everything with a bland feel. Aided by the slack tempo that keeps everything at a one-note feel regardless of what's happening, these overall bring the film down.

Rated Unrated/R: Language, Violence and children-in-jeopardy.

I massively disagree with the negative reviews! Although not a horror like american movies, its a much rarer type, the creepy silent hallway and dripping cellar type of nightmares, it's well made and acted -you get a slow but steady feeling of dread (more than gore or fear) , there's family drama, madness, suicide, ghosts, but also blood, murder, a empty hotel, obligatory asian horror movie kid, but less annoying here thankfully- lighting and filming is very nice, but in a David Lynch way. Not a horror with demons and monsters and all that fun but a slow paced, very creepy sinister atmospheric movie- if that sounds interesting - give it a chance.

The movie has some paranormal scenes randomly thrown in there just so it can call itself a horror movie. The few paranormal scenes it has relied heavily on jump scares while abusing the horrible audio balancing. The last 30 minutes of the movie completely throws away the idea of it being a paranormal movie and renders all the previous paranormal scenes meaningless. It's like the writers couldn't decide what they want the plot of the movie to be.

The audio is really quiet throughout the movie making you want to turn up the volume to just to hear the characters talk, but suddenly has insanely high volume for the jump scare scenes.

The script is a ball of confusion and the horror element takes a back seat to way too much family drama. The struggle/fight sequences are unconvincing.

How do films like this get financed? Incredibly dull all around.