10/37
It soon encounters much more than expected as it moves deeper inside the nightmarish old building
Tale
The crew of a horror web series travels to an abandoned asylum for a live broadcast. The filmmakers were unable to get permission from the South Korean government to film in the actual hospital, so scenes in the film set in Gonjiam were actually filmed in the National Maritime High School in Busan, with the production team adhering closely to the floor plan of the hospital to recreate exactly the same exterior and hallways..
References Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007)
Charlotte keeps looking to the side when the group is in front of the hospital. She is obviously responding as she smiles at whoever it is..
This is not the case for Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum
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 than a "regular" movie.
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.