10 great South Korean horror films

South Korean horror cinema has experienced a surge in popularity over the past few decades. From terrifying tales of vengeful female ghosts to haunting explorations of economic inequality, colonialism, xenophobia, geopolitics and gender dynamics, these diverse yet consistently fear-inducing films have carved out a distinct niche in the global genre landscape.

The multi-faceted, thought-provoking nature of South Korean horror lurks within Jason Yu’s disturbing debut feature Sleep (2023) in which newlyweds Hyeon-soo and Soo-jin find their union disrupted when the husband’s sleepwalking poses a threat to their child. As steeped in the psychological as it is in the fantastical, Sleep is shrewdly ambiguous with regards to the causes of the husband’s disorder yet ruthlessly precise in its forensic dissection of marriage.

Sleep occupies the domestic strain of South Korean horror which was instigated by Kim Ki-young’s landmark The Housemaid (1960), with further examples including A Devilish Homicide (1965) and Acacia (2003). There is also a supernatural dimension to Yu’s film with the beleaguered wife turning to shamanism in a desperate bid to save her husband: this aspect of traditional Korean culture has featured prominently in The Wailing (2016), The Mimic (2017) and Exhuma (2024).

In leaving much to the audience’s imagination, Sleep eschews explicitness in favour of creepy atmospherics and potent symbolism. These are key characteristics of such signature South Korean horror films as A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), Into the Mirror (2003) and The Red Shoes (2005). However, maximalist genre hybrids like Train to Busan (2016), Peninsula (2020) and Project Wolf Hunting (2022) have since delivered grotesque splatter by the bucketload.

For those in the mood for a culturally specific scare, here are 10 spine-tingling titles to get you started.

Director: Kim Ki-young

Kim Ki-young’s classic domestic horror film sees an upwardly mobile family torn apart when pianist Kim Dong-sik (Kim Jin-kyu) and his pregnant wife (Ju Jeung-nyeo) hire housemaid Myung-sook (Lee Eun-shim). Their new employee demonstrates unusual behaviour such as catching rats with her hands, but it’s her capacity for manipulation which will irrevocably impact a family that is overly concerned with keeping up appearances.

The Housemaid is a masterclass in claustrophobia. It’s predominately confined to the two-story home, which becomes suffocatingly compressed as the family gets trapped by their prioritisation of social standing. Kim presents their abode as a bourgeois cage, with his camera peeking through doorways and windows. The ominously framed staircase becomes a powerful symbol of not just hierarchy but how people can rise and fall in status.

Lee gives a mesmerising performance as the enigmatic interloper – it’s ambiguous as to whether her housemaid is causing the family’s downfall or simply expediating the inevitable.

Director: Ko Young-nam

The influence of The Housemaid looms large in Suddenly in Dark Night. However, the terror in Ko Young-nam’s hallucinatory cult favourite is conveyed from the wife’s unreliable perspective.

Biologist Kang Yu-jin (Yoon Il-bong) returns from a butterfly-collecting expedition and surprises his wife Seon-hee (Kim Young-ae) with housemaid Mi-ok (Lee Ki-seon). However, the discovery of the housemaid’s shaman doll leads Seon-hee to suspect that Mi-ok is plotting harm against her family. A surreal confrontation between past and present ensues with the possibly delusional Seon-hee unwilling to accommodate the antiquated beliefs of the traditionally-minded Mi-ok in her westernised home.

Giallo aficionados will appreciate the trippily distorted aesthetic with garish colours, copious Dutch angles and kaleidoscopic visions illustrating the heroine’s fractured state of mind. Choi Jong-hyuk’s pounding synthesiser score and startingly amplified sound effects ramp up the hysteria in tandem with a wonderfully melodramatic lead performance from Kim that encapsulates the film’s feverish paranoia.

Director: Park Ki-hyung

Whispering Corridors is ostensibly a supernatural tale involving a vengeful ghost from the tragic past of an all-female high school. However, it’s also a stinging indictment of South Korea’s tyrannical education system since it touches on such harrowing themes as the stifling of individual expression, unchecked authoritarianism and teenage suicide.

The film’s title refers to how the school is rife with pernicious gossip by day and haunted after dark. Indeed, it’s an uninviting place at any hour: scenes of school routine exude a sense of drab purgatory while spooky, blue-tinted night-time set pieces mine jump scares through dynamic whip pans and sudden cuts.

After a fallow period for the genre throughout the 1980s and 90s, the surprise box office success of Whispering Corridors kickstarted the South Korean horror boom. Produced independently for a thrifty $600,000, it was followed by five sequels, which are unconnected in terms of narrative but reprise settings and key motifs.

Director: Ahn Byeong-ki

A techno-nightmare that does for cellphones what the Japanese horror Ring (1998) did for video cassettes and Pulse (2001) did for the internet, Phone is a sleek mainstream genre piece which unfolds more like a dread-filled mystery than a full-on horror film.

Facing death rates related to her latest scoop, journalist Ji-won (Ha Ji-won) lies low by house-sitting at her sister’s mansion. Ji-won changes her phone number for safety, only for niece Young-ju (Eun Seo-woo) to exhibit abnormal behaviour after answering an anonymous call. An investigation reveals a pattern of deaths linked to the number’s previous owners.

If writer-director Ahn Byeong-ki resists going for the jugular, he proves a dab hand at using East Asian horror staples. This includes eliciting petrifying facial expressions from Eun as the possessed child, while Ji-won’s vision of a vengeful spirit playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano is an especially sinister example of the long-haired female ghost trope.

Director: Kim Jee-woon

Based on a Joseon dynasty folk tale, A Tale of Two Sisters is an exquisitely crafted piece of psychological horror that unfolds within the grounds of a handsome yet suitably foreboding private estate. A dark fairytale tone is conjured by impeccably stylised, dimly lit interior sets: elaborately patterned wallpaper, ornate furnishings and a rich colour scheme that is heavy on deep red.

Troubled teenager Soo-mi (Lim Soo-jung) returns home after a spell in a sanatorium; she reconnects with her younger sister Soo-yeon (Moon Geun-young), but their father Moo-hyeon (Kim Kap-su) appears distant, while stepmother Eun-joo (Yum Jung-ah) is curiously unwelcoming. The family is struggling to come to terms with an undisclosed tragedy, which sets the stage for a gasp-inducing twist.

Skilfully paced by director Kim Jee-woon, this disquieting examination of familial trauma is pivoted on heartrending performances from Lim and Moon that gracefully convey adolescent anxieties within the meticulously designed gothic trappings.

Director: Kong Su-chang

Vietnam, 1972. A South Korean military base receives a radio message from a missing platoon. The source of the signal is the eponymous strategic island. Lieutenant Choi (Kam Woo-sung) is tasked with leading a rescue mission in exchange for early discharge. But on route, the troops find a chilling epitaph on a stone: “Those with blood on their hands will never return to their homeland.”

Shot in Cambodia, the film’s principal setting is an eerily dilapidated French plantation mansion with broken windows and over-grown vegetation. This is where a supernatural force exerts its malevolent influence: it can be a challenge to keep track of characters who are all in camouflage, yet the cast deliver distinctive takes on psychological rupture that culminates in a deranged beheading.

A high-ranking entry in the military horror subgenre, R-Point may not be coherently plotted, but its criticism of South Korea’s involvement in foreign conflicts is horrifyingly clear.

Director: Park Chan-wook

After being infected with a virus, Catholic priest Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) gains superhuman strength along with an insatiable craving for human blood. An affair with bored housewife Tae-Ju (Kim Ok-bin) further complicates his plight when she also becomes immortal.

Park Chan-wook’s hyperkinetic cinema is one of extremes, and this loose adaptation of Émile Zola’s 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin puts a vampiric spin on his trademark theme of transgressive desire: Sang-hyun’s worldly cravings have been shackled by religion, while Tae-Ju’s agency has been restricted by family responsibilities.

Thirst is laced with skewed humour: the vampire couple tries to give their home a sense of daylight by hanging florescent lights and painting the walls blinding white. It also deviates from vampire lore by omitting bats, stakes, garlic and crosses. Instead, Park channels body horror to present vampirism as a disease which the priest strives to manage only to forsake his moral compass in the process.

Director: Na Hong-jin

Slow-witted police officer Jong-gu (Kwak Do-won) investigates a spate of unexplained illness and deranged murders in a remote village. When supernatural elements come into play, the sceptical Jong-gu is prompted to consult shaman Il-gwang (Hwang Jung-min).

Running a hefty 156 minutes, this slow burn hybrid of mystery and horror initially recalls Bong Joon Ho’s procedural Memories of Murder (2003) with its unhurried tempo and muddy, rain-soaked palette. Working mostly with natural light and earthy tones, cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo makes the mountainous location feel worryingly cut-off from civilisation. Even moments of deadpan humour have a disconcerting feel as the oafish Jong-gu struggles to make headway with villagers who are distrustful of outsiders.

As events enter uncanny territory, writer-director Na Hong-jin confidently mixes East Asian folklore with universal genre tropes while retaining an unnerving rawness even throughout a phantasmagorical tour-de-force exorcism sequence. It’s this visual starkness that makes The Wailing such a uniquely insidious experience.

Director: Jung Bum-shik

This unsettling found footage horror film involves the crew of a live-streaming series cynically exploring a boarded-up asylum that is rumoured to be haunted. Strange occurrences will wrestle this particular episode out of their creative control.

Sidestepping the dreaded shaky-cam issue associated with the format, director Jung Bum-shik equips a capable cast of unknowns with body-mounted GoPro cameras. One camera is directed at their faces to capture reactions, while the other records the brutalist-style surroundings to create a more immersive faux reality. This approach also aids the transition from playful ribbing of the live-streaming phenomenon to well-executed lo-fi scares.

Although it draws inspiration from urban legends surrounding the real-life Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital, most of the film was actually shot at the deserted National Maritime High School in Busan, which also has its share of ghostly tales. Largely devoid of gore, it’s the grimly menacing location that makes Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum so scary.

Director: Cho Il-hyung

As is often the case with zombie movies, #Alive proved to be alarmingly prescient: this tale of a carefree gamer locked down in his high-rise apartment when an outbreak plunges the world into chaos was released just six months into the Covid-19 pandemic.

Adjusting to the ‘new normal’, Oh Joon-woo (Yoo Ah-in) chugs liquor while dancing to his favourite tunes. Yet even those who are usually happy to stay home eventually discover that isolation begets desperation for human contact. Joon-woo finds it when he spots survivalist Kim Yoo-bin (Park Shin-hye) in the opposite building.

#Alive makes a virtue of compactness, with the vertiginous residential complex indicative of civilisation in decay. The gnarly zombies are of the fast-moving variety, and the attack sequences have a palpable frisson. Kim’s handy weaponisation of hiking gear may be a stretch, considering his dependence on digital devices, but disbelief can be suspended when the slayings are so satisfyingly squelchy.

Sleep is in cinemas, including BFI Southbank, from 12 July 2024.