Whispering Corridors

Ahh, the movie that started it all. Normally, I probably would have been blown away by the unique and awesome-ness of this movie... but seeing as how I watched this entire series backwards, I was less impressed with this one as I was with most of the sequels it spawned.

The power of this particular horror movie, however, is the fact that it eventually ends up making sense. So often, in these type of movies, the ending is ambiguous or confusing, or just plain stupid. Here it is neither. The twist is actually pretty creative, and hard to figure out... especially since the director tries a lot of different things in order to make sure it comes off as a surprise. And there are enough moments (though there could always be more) that had me jumping in my seat. The girls at this school (as opposed to, say, Memento Mori) are actually interesting and broad enough to keep the viewers interest. None of them come off as carbon copies of the others, and seem very... normal. Typical high schoolers you could find in just about any school.

And again, we are shown very evil, almost sadistic teachers, which almost seems to be a theme in this particular series. If this is the way Korean schools were/are run, then something definitely needs to be done... no wonder so many dead-students come back as ghosts... heck, I'd be pissed too!

And yet... I still wasn't overly impressed with it. I had very high expectations going in which may have ruined it for me... and some of the effects were cheesy and overly-common by today's horror-movie standards. But if you normally get scared easily, and go into this one not expecting much, then you may actually end up liking it a lot. It's a decent horror movie (and not just because of the ghost-killings) so I can see why it inspired many others of this genre... but in the end, it's semi-forgettable, and has trouble measuring up to its sequels. At least in my opinion... which, again, doesn't say much.

My Rating: