Gonjiam: Manicômio Assombrado

A terrifying found-footage horror from the South Korean film industry, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum travels a well-worn path, packs the expected genre tropes, and implements the same formula that other similar examples before it did. And yet, everything about it is surprisingly better & far more effective, possibly due to its genuinely tense build-up & excellent rapport between its committed cast.

I'm always a bit hesitant to watch found footage films with the haunted house/asylum narrative. They all usually follow the exact same formula with almost the exact same scares. Honestly this one is no different. But of course I watched it because there was no doubt I wasn't going to. And even though it's similar to films like "Grave Encounters (2011) and such, it builds an impressive amount of tension and makes what you'll expect seem fresh. The setup is basic, a production crew goes to a supposed haunted asylum for their reality show to capture ghosts live and break into a room (402) that's locked and so far impenetrable. The first 35 mins are pretty introductory but does a good job of making you feel good with the crew. Once they arrive at the asylum, things unfold naturally at a steady pace with the last 20 mins or so being quite hair raising. Seriously, there were a few instances where things got spooky, for real. This isn't a movie that does anything new or reinvents the "Haunted Asylum" film, but what this South Korean film does do is let you know just because you might know what's going to happen, you shouldn't be comfortable still in the manner that things play out. This one might be in my top 10 for the year.

It is well-paced and just the proper length.

The setup is good.

The actors are competent.

And most importantly, the third act does not disappoint, drag or get all weird for the sake of being weird. There are some genuinely suspenseful and scary moments.

But yeah, rethink the high heel boots if ever invited on a live-streaming haunted horror adventure at a location highly rated by a cable news outlet.

The movie started off pretty slow. Once it started ramping up though it definitely moved pretty quickly. I would say probably only the last half an hour was the really creepy part, but it was definitely worth the watch. It was a little hard to follow at certain times because the cameras keep flickering and turning off and you think that it's something wrong with your TV or Internet, but that's the way they have the movie set up. I appreciate it that there were English subtitles and those subtitles included telling us what the words on the doors meant as well so we knew which room they were going into.

You start to hate one of the characters about halfway through and you hope that they die through the rest of the movie. A good "found footage" movie.

My son and I have been looking for horror movies that will actually scare us and this one definitely creeped us out enough to where we had to watch TikTok for a little bit afterwards to take our mind off of it.

Normally I am critical of found-footage horror, as it usually is unnecessary and brings nothing more to the story. Usually found-footage movies would do better as a "regular" movie. This is not the case for Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. With new cutting-edge technology, and a reason as to why the actors know how to work a camera, it serves this movies purpose excellent. There is little shaky-cam and other "effects" that you would usually see in found-footage, which in my opinion ruins the movie.

The story itself is pretty standard, 7 young "ghost hunters" enter an old insane asylum, mainly for views and profit, which makes it more realistic than other similar movies. The pacing of the movie is pretty slow, and nothing really happens for the first half, but it's worth it!

I originally wanted to give this a 6, but considering this is a horror movie, and one of the scariest of it's sub-genre I've ever seen, I bumped it up to a 7. If you want a scary movie without too much plot, this is the movie for you.