Yeogo goedam 3: Yeowoo gyedan

Even fans of horror movies are sometimes in the mood for something a little lighter & this fits the bill. It's not gory or intense. The story is good, as is the acting. I've read a lot of comments about the lesbian tone to it, but it's just barely. I didn't see the first two before this one but I might check them out one night when I want something easy to watch. This movie would be perfect for something like a 13 year old girls slumber party or something like that. If there is a lesson to be learned from this movie, more so than be careful what you wish for, it's use conditioner. The main characters have such gorgeous hair it will make you sick!!

Yun Jae-yeon, the first woman to direct a movie of the Yeogo Goedam series, faced a big challenge when making Wishing Stairs. It was Yun's debut, and the two leading actresses, Song Ji-hyo and Park Han-byeol, were newcomers at that time as well. Also, Yun had to meet high expectations because Wishing Stair's predecessors, Whispering Corridors and Memento Mori, had been very successful.

Just like all of the Yeogo Goedam movies, Wishing Stairs has a closed story of its own but plays with the same themes. Again, it takes place at a girls' school, this time a school of arts. There, the main characters, Yun Jin-seong (Song) and Kim Sohee (Park), are studying ballet. They are close friends, but their friendship gets challenged when they both enter a contest for a place to study at a Russian ballet faculty. Yun Jin-seong envies her more talented friend. She works hard but just gets scolded by the teacher, whereas Kim Sohee impresses everybody with her effortless skill; she looks like the sure winner of the contest. Yun's jealousy grows till the point that she even seeks supernatural help: Campus legend has it that there is a stair case on the campus which grants a wish when you reach its last step. But as Yun climbs the stairs, the viewer already knows that this is a bad idea. For folklore tells that wishes granted by a supernatural force often come with undesirable side effects, and Wishing Stairs confirms this.

Like the previous Yeogo Goedam films, Wishing Stairs isn't a real horror movie. The supernatural serves as a vehicle to accelerate a worldly tragedy. So the movie is less about horror and more about people feeling trapped because they are unable to become the persons they want to be. This idea is stressed by the third main character, Eom. Eom is an overweight outsider, and if the other students notice her at all, it's usually just to make fun of her. She tries to escape her misery by idolizing Kim Sohee, dreaming of being her friend or perhaps even being her.

However, it is also Eom (Jo An) where direction wasn't flawless. Unlike her character, Jo happens to be pretty and slim, so she was put in a fat-suit. The problem with that approach is that viewers always notice fat-suits, no matter how well they are made. This might not be a problem in comedies, but in this drama it is a distraction. Also, Jo's performance is sometimes at the border of slapstick, which doesn't do her tragic character justice.

Another distraction was the use of an incoherent flashback. It seems an obligation for Yeogo Goedam movies to employ flashbacks to reveal dark secrets of the past, so Wishing Stairs has one flashback as well. Without spoiling too much, it's about an act of sabotage. However, that small part of the plot doesn't roll out plausibly. It causes more confusion than insight and should have been deleted entirely.

But the strengths of Wishing Stairs outweigh its flaws. The acting of Song and Park is great. The movie has a high production value. And like its predecessors, it has a certain charm and unique mix of drama and horror to it. It is a tragedy of universal nature, so viewers can relate to it even if they don't happen to be Korean teenage girls (as is the case with this old bloke). Wishing Stairs is a worthy entry in the series, which makes director Yun's debut a real accomplishment.

In a Korean boarding school, there is a legend about its twenty-eight steps stairway: when the twentieth-ninth step appears, the fox will grant a wish to the climber. The lesbian ballet student Kim So-hee (Han-byeol Park) is in deep love with her passive girlfriend and also ballet student Yoon Jin-sung (Ji-hyo Song). When there is a competition for a single spot in a famous ballet school in Russia, the envious Jin-sung finds the twentieth-ninth step and asks to beat the favorite So-hee. However, there is a price to pay for the wish unknown to Jin-sung and the consequence is the accidental death of So-hee. Meanwhile, the fat student Eon Hae-ju (An jo), who is despised and tormented by her classmate Han Yoon-ji (Ji-Yeon Park), misses So-hee. When she also finds the mysterious step, she wishes the return of So-hee with tragic consequences.

"Wishing Stairs" is a creepy low-paced ghost story, where the climax with scary sequences is only reached in the end. The story builds the mystery developing four characters and there is a subtle insinuation, at least in the Western mind, that So-hee is lesbian, Jin-sung is her passive love and the complex Hae-ju worships So-hee, forming a never clear triangle of love. In the end, I liked this refreshing horror movie, that slightly recalls the concepts of "Wishmaster" (make a wish but to the stairs), "Carrie" (with the bad treatment spent by the schoolmates) and "Pet Sematary" (with the return of So-hee from the world of the dead), but in a totally different environment and situation. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

The third part of the loosely bound "Yeogo goedam" series is a mixture of the first and the second movie. It takes some suspense and horror elements from the first and best part of the series and the dramatic and romantic fragments of the much weaker second movie. What eventually comes out is a mostly dark, well played and entertaining movie that still lacks of something to ultimately convince. I would say that I missed some really haunting, frightening or intense scenes. I would also say that the third part adds nothing new to the series. Another negative point is that the end is not much surprising and I was expecting something deeper or darker on both an emotional and a suspenseful level.

The main idea of this third strike is quite great. A legend goes that if you climb the twenty eight steps leading up to the women's art school dormitory where this movie takes place, counting each step aloud, and find a twenty ninth, a spirit will appear and grant you a wish. Now, you can imagine how school girls might abuse of this legend and you have a big scenario of jealousy, mobbing, treachery, broken friendships and love stories in mind. Sadly, the movie only scratches the surface of it and basically focuses on three or four personalities. The dynamics between these characters are only of a slight interest as there is only a strong connection between the two main actresses, the one that created evil and the one that lived the evil. This relation is not enough to carry this movie on and make it be more than just an enjoyable and entertaining movie.

It's a good movie to be watched once but I wouldn't give it another try as it didn't really impress, touch or inspire me. I really feel that this movie should have gone further with its intriguing initial idea. This movie could have been more complex, more human and more creepy and should have hit harder. The director and producers really missed a good occasion to push this movie on the same level as the popular first flick but the ultimately failed. The third strike is allover still slightly better than the second one that had gone nowhere. But the third part is even less memorable in its uniqueness as the previous one at some points and overall of an average quality. This movie is entertaining and has a couple of enjoyable drama, suspense and romance moments but the part don't glue and fit together like a puzzle and you can feel many ups and downs of quality throughout the whole movie.

I would only suggest watching this movie to the collectors and true fans of the series, anybody else might be alright just watching the first flick. Nevertheless, I am heading out for the fourth part that got some good critics very soon in the hope that this one equals the first part.

This film was a little frustrating in that it's very, very well done in terms of writing, acting, production design and cinematography, but is paced far too slow to manage any real "fright factor" as a horror/ghost story.

I'm well aware that Asian horror films tend to run at a much slower pace than American horror as a general rule, but in this case that "like watching paint dry" pace leaves what could have been a good, maybe even classic film as just "a well-done suspense drama with some light supernatural overtones." With an acceleration in pacing at roughly midway through the film, and the addition - there was a multitude of opportunities for it - of significantly more supernatural content, this would have been a rip-snorter of a horror film that could have made some real tracks in the American market both financially and critically.

Even though as a guy it takes an effort to warm up to the setting of a girls' ballet school, the story is very strong - even excellent - and makes the film worthwhile independently of the horror/supernatural factor, as a study of jealousy vs. self-confidence, subterfuge vs. honest effort, and irrationality vs. reason.

The one weakness I had a little trouble with was the mentally-handicapped student, Hae-Ju, who plays a pivotal role in the story - the fact that she could be present at the school at all. The idea of of a mentally handicapped student being enrolled in an elite and highly-competitive ballet school isn't plausible, unless academic admissions customs in Korea are significantly different than in America. Add to that the fact that she's quite overweight for a ballet student, to the point where, again, it's not plausible that she'd be accepted into such a school.

Those implausibility factors are puzzling in that they're unnecessary. Hae-Ju would have been more believable and a stronger character if she had been not mentally handicapped but simply unpopular, "nerdy," neurotic, or a combination of these, then had become progressively messed-up mentally as the tragic events and malicious treatment by her peers began to weigh on her. (There's some additional confusion that comes into play in the fact that Hae-Ju's character sheds, then regains weight fairly rapidly a couple of times as well as changes her hair color - again as intentional parts of the story - which when combined with scenes in dim lighting make it a little confusing at times to distinguish her from other students.)

Anyway, implausibilities aside, Hae-Ju makes the innocent wish for the dead girl she admired, So-Hee, to be returned to her, and the way the writers make that role play out is masterful: You're not really sure - and the film leaves it intentionally ambiguous - whether Hae-Ju has just completely flipped out and *thinks* she's So-Hee, or whether the spirit of So-Hee has actually merged with Hae-Ju, using her as her malevolent tool. In the hands of a lesser director that ambiguity would have introduced a mess of confusion to the plot, but in this case it not only avoids that trap but adds a nice depth of complexity both to the two characters and to the story as a whole.

It's perhaps unfair or apples-and-oranges illogical to compare "Wishing Stairs" to an American-style supernatural thriller like "Sixth Sense," "Stir of Echoes" or "The Shining," but you can't escape the feeling while watching it that it would have vastly benefited from a marked intensification of pacing and supernatural content as the film progressed. There are some very well-done scenes, like where Jin-Sung finally is confronted by So-Hee's ghost in her dorm room, then in her dorm room closet, that nevertheless fall a little flat - they play out so slowly that the audience has ample time not only to guess what's likely to happen next, but to run through memories of similar scenes from other films and guess at a number of possible outcomes. If the idea is to scare the wits out of people, the scares should be paced rapidly (and artfully) enough to where the audience has no time to anticipate them, much less to mull over other possibilities. Because nearly all of the horror aspect of the film is so muted by the pacing, "Wishing Stairs" could be more accurately classified as "a suspense drama with supernatural overtones," rather than an out-and-out horror film.

Bottom Line: On balance "Wishing Stairs" is a well-made movie that's definitely worth the trip, but disappointing for fans of solid, squirm-in-your-seat fright fests.