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Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Second Sight Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (19th July 2024). |
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The Film
 Grand Bell Award (Best New Actor): Wi Ha-joon (nominee), Best Planning: Won-guk Kim (nominee), and Best Editing: Hyung-ju Kim and Yang Dong-yub (nominees) - Grand Bell Awards, South Korea, 2018 Blue Dragon Award (Best New Actor): Wi Ha-joon (nominee), Best New Actress: Park Ji-hyun (nominee), Best Editing : Hyung-ju Kim and Yang Dong-yub (winners), and Best Technical Award (sound): Ju-kang Park and Yong Ki Park (nominees) - Blue Dragon Awards, 2018 Chunsa Film Art Award (Best New Actor): Wi Ha-joon (nominee) and Best New Actress: Park Ji-hyun (nominee) - Chunsa Film Art Awards, 2019 Producer Award (Best Sound): Ju-kang Park and Yong Ki Park (winners) - Korean Film Producers Association Awards, 2018 Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital in Gyeonggi, South Korea has long been the subject of urban legends since it closed down in 1979 after the mass suicide of its patients and its director, with rumors that it was a state-run torture center and the suicides were actually mass murder or that the deaths were caused by the ghosts of Korean soldiers slaughtered during the Japanese occupation and supposedly buried on the site. The site went viral in 2012 when CNN published an online article designating it one of the "7 Freakiest Places on the Planet" (since updated to ten in 2019) and, despite police patrols, has regularly been infiltrated by urban explorers and teenagers on dares. Different types of hauntings have been documented as exclusive to each level – including the sightings of a schoolgirl who of three who were found comatose in the facility and later died violently – but one such case that went viral is the cellphone video of two high school boys attempting to break into the only remaining locked room 402 who have not been seen since the video cut off prematurely after they were interrupted by a strange noise. Seeing the number of monetized views the original video got, YouTuber Ha-joon (Midnight's Wi Ha-joon) of the channel "Horror Times" decides to make a livestream "horror experience" exploration of Gonjiam "Korea's first live horror show ever!" Hoping to garner over a million views – having already calculated their share of the ad revenue – Ha-joon and his team – host Lee Seung-wook and first camera operator Park Sung-hoon – recruit a quartet of viewers to accompany them: dancer and world traveler Charlotte Moon (Illang: The Wolf Brigade's Ye-Won Mun) who has been visiting the sites from the CNN article while touring, shy nursing student Ah-yeon Oh, tomboyish Park Ji-Hyun (The Divine Fury) who will also operate the second camera, and proto-incel Je-Yoon (Jay Yoo). Setting up a mobile production unit on the ground of the hospital, Ha-joon keeps one eye on the live view counter while directing the team's exploration as they make their way from the first level where ghosts of the patients have been seen, the third level where the schoolgirl is supposed to appear, taking EMF readings and conducting rituals to rile up the restless spirits... and direct he does as his colleagues engineer a series of gags staged to engender authentic frightened reactions from the recruits; however, a series of incidents they did not plan become increasingly difficult to dismiss as coincidence including a doll seen in the hands of a patient in an old photograph that keeps turning up in odd places and scrawled graffiti reading "Let's live!" changes to "Let's die!" Ostensibly the first "found footage" film made in South Korea and a box office hit that even garnered some award nominations and wins – with television actor Wi Ha-joon getting good notices leading to his more prominent roles as the handsome serial killer of Midnight and as one of the principals in the international hit series Squid Game – Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum does not reinvent the wheel with regard to the genre, it simply executes all of the familiar tropes with skill and style while adapting the formats of urban exploration and paranormal investigation to a then-new but still highly-recognizable generation of "anything for the content" creators and live streamers (including the dreaded "IRL streamers"). Most of the jump scares can be anticipated, and indeed there are some instances in which horror shorts director Beom-sik Jeong (Epitaph) seems aware of this and draws out the reveals of possessed faces thrust into fisheye lenses and contorted apparitions getting closer each time the camera pans back to build up dread. Dread is the operative word here, as that is what the film truly achieves in between the jump scares which – whether they quicken the viewer's pulse or not function as an intermittent release valve before the film moves on to the next waves and crests – and Room 402 ultimately feels as much a McGuffin as the mysterious backstory not just because nothing visualized can truly live up to the anticipation as most viewers will likely get as much pleasure out of seeing the comeuppances of ruthless Ha-joon and Je-Yoon who has been projecting his own fears onto Ah-yeon and needling her to the point where she finds his own fearful reactions worthy of ridicule even as she too is afraid. The "ghost in the machine" aspect of the story is quite effective with Wi Ha-joon doing a one man show – most of the other performances are more about ensemble dynamics than individual standout bits – going mad in a tent that is distanced from the haunted site but no less creepy as the winds billow the glamping tent walls, the generator cuts out and comes back on conveniently, the artifacts of the VAR playback may not be the only "ghosting", and even the footage from the drone probing the hospital's facade might not showing what is real. People get thrown across rooms, hung just out the top of the frame, and dragged away from an overturned camera as expected at the climax of a found footage movie, but Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum takes what the "found footage" genre is about and just does it well. 
Video
Shot on a variety of 4K HD formats from professional to prosumer – including drones and GoPro models whose "high definition" definition is a step or more below even the 2160p settings of more recent models – and finished as a 2K digital intermediate, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray encode looks pretty much the same as Well Go USA's single-layer Blu-ray from 2018 with a slightly higher bitrate raising the size to roughly twenty-seven gigabytes which is sufficient given the inherent and self-imposed limitations of the source mixing camera types, sensor sizes, and different types of in-camera compression before the addition of various video artifacts and glitches in post-production. 
Audio
The sole feature audio option is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Korean track which starts out fairly front-oriented given the "stereo" audio of the recording cameras with the scoring and diegetic music reaching the surrounds, but gradually the film makes more use of the rears for atmosphere and the spread of unnerving sound design touches as the haunting separates itself from the show's subterfuge. Optional English subtitles are provided without any apparent errors. 
Extras
New to the set is an audio commentary by film historians Mary Beth McAndrews and Terry Mesnard who demonstrate not only an infectious fondness for the film and the "found footage" genre but also some knowledge of both the technical aspects of social media vlogging and livestreaming but also of the types of "content creator" personalities reflected in the film's characters and "real life" paranormal investigator television and internet personalities. They provide some factual background on Gonjiam as well as discussing the ways that the film knowingly uses found footage tropes in conjunction and technical aesthetics in serving up the more overarching tropes of the horror genre including portents of some of the characters' fates. "Fear the Unknown: Zoë Rose Smith on Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum" (22:32), despite the title, is less about the film itself than about the universal human attraction to such places and the tendency to fill in the blanks of official documentation, as well as how this is incorporated into the found footage genre. The latter half of the piece goes wider for suggested viewing outside of found footage genre but focusing on the motivations of characters drawn to haunted locations real and otherwise with films like The Forest (featuring the Japanese "suicide forest"), As Above, So Below (set in the Paris catacombs), Ghostwatch and some of the more recent films about the Enfield haunting including The Conjuring 2 which took vast liberties with an already dodgy source, and the Turkish Baskin.  Ported from earlier editions are the EPK archive featuerettes produced at the time of the South Korean release but here included with English subtitles since Well Go USA did not bother to include them on their release which only featured a trailer. Despite their titles "The Beginning of the Rumours" (4:57), "The New Faces" (6:13), "The Sanctum of Horror" (10:58), "The Truth of the Ghostlore" (7:30), and "The Live Recording" (12:59), they are essentially behind-the-scenes pieces for the film under the guise of offering contextual information on the haunting within the film (look to the commentary track and online for the less fantastical background on Gonjiam) while "The Press Conference" (15:55) is self explanatory.
Packaging
The limited edition – a standard edition is available simultaneously – comes in a rigid slipcase with new artwork by Luke Headland with a seventy-page book featuring new essays by Sarah Appleton James Marsh, Meagan Navarro and Amber T, as well as six collectors' art cards (none of which has been supplied for review). 
Overall
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum does not reinvent the wheel with regard to the "found footage" genre, it simply executes all of the familiar tropes with skill and style.
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