Top 5 Korean Scary Movies

Happy Halloween Everyone! Do you have your costumes ready to hit the road? If you don’t plan on joining New York City Halloween parade or a costume party that will take place all over NYC, it is all right. Prepare popcorn, gummy bears, or your favorite snacks to chew on and watch Korean horror movies that I am about to introduce to you. One distinctive characteristic about Korean scary movies is that you get terrified by your own emotion without seeing a series of brutal attacks or physical confrontations. You will understand what I mean once you watch one. A few Korean friends contributed their objective reviews in determining the following five movies and its rank. Be the judge of your own and feel free to share your feedback with our Facebook Page. Shall we start the count-down?

Number 5 - Phone – 폰

Korea graded this movie highly due to the fact that the phone was a medium of the story. It was fresh and interesting to many viewers. The scenario goes: people who received untraceable phone calls started dying of a heart attack. A journalist Ji-Won who had kept getting menacing phone calls from a sex trafficking victim decided to change her cell phone number. But oddly enough, a sales associate at a phone store cannot give her any other numbers except for 011-9998-6644. Phone rings, somebody dies! Ji-Won keeps receiving mysterious phone calls with a girl’s weeping sound on the other end. She soon finds out that all previous owners of the number got murdered questionably and the police never caught the killers. As her investigation goes on, she discovers that her friend, Ho-Jung, was involved in those murders....It was not adult's acting that scared many viewers but it was a young actress’s who plays a daughter of Ho-Jung. She was so freakish in her part.

Number 4 - A Tale of Two Sisters – 장화 홍련

This movie sets up an eerie vibe with two sisters depressive behavior and a stepmother’s pathological obsession to be perfect in their roles. Incidents taking place in the house, created by hatred and abomination toward each other, eventually result in the demolition of the family. Two sisters, Su-Yeon and Su-Mi, who lost their birth mother moved in to the house owned by their young and beautiful stepmother Eun-Joo. She longs for undivided attention from her husband and also wants to have a perfect family by being a perfect mother and perfect wife. However, Su-Mi, scrawny and a pale older sister, goe against her stepmother as she herself wants to fill her deceased mother’s roles. Su-Yeon, who is feeble and cries often, depends on her older sister and gets tormented by her jealousy stepmother due to her resembling look with her dead mother.

Number 3 - Bon Shin Sah Ban - 분신사바

Some may say that South Korea is one of the most superstitious countries. Many people go to a shaman or a fortune teller to foresee their future. With that being said, this movie depicts about the impossible possibility that people can kill each other with a certain spell. Believe it or not, viewers loved this fictional element. A girl named Yu-Jin was transferred from Seoul and gets bullied by new classmates. Feeling a strong urge to take revenge, she learns that, with a spell called Boon-Shin-Sah-Bah, she can kill people she hates. Focus on the scene where Yu-Jin gets framed by the spell and starts harming her classmates! Her face expression will last in your head for a while.

Number 2 - Whispering Corridors – 여고괴담

It was a hot summer day. I remember watching this movie in a movie theater with my girlfriends. We were in high school and quickly drawn to the story because of the girls high school background. In fact, this movie was so successful that four more sequels were produced. Not only that, the main characters who appeared in one of the movies all became famous actresses in the Korean entertainment industry. The school in the movie is full of lively and bubbly high school students. But, it has a record that, about 10 years ago, a student named Jin-Joo died and her case went cold. Her close friend, Eun-Young, became a teacher after her graduation and came back to the same school to teach. Then, students began to die questionably and the school became a haunted house all of sudden. Everyone was horrified. Nobody wanted to walk around by themselves especially at night. Without resisting the urge to investigate, Eun-Young goes alone to find the truth and only to find that dubious death is all connected to her friend Jin-Joo. Did you catch the ominous sound scattering around when students were standing in the back of the school building?

Number 1 - The Hole - 올가미

This movie is extremely uncomfortable to watch. I would say this is a movie you watch once and never watch again. A mother, Jin-Sook, who raised her son alone for 30 years views him as her love. When he married, she couldn’t bear the idea that she has to share him with another woman. That is when her abuse towards the daughter-in-law began. Jin-Sook insists on keeping her bond with her son by bathing him, feeding him and grooming him even after his marriage. When her daughter-in-law confronted to stop Jin-Sook, she plans to get rid of her. I still remember Jin-Sook’s line while holding an ax to stab her daughter-in-law behind her back “you are just a toy that I bought him…..”

Enjoy!