Eun-young (Mi-yeon Lee) returns as an instructor to the draconian high school she attended. Her own cruel homeroom teacher was recently murdered by a ghost, and Eun-young sees a connection to the death of her friend many years ago in the school. Four students seem somehow caught up in the horrific events: the nearly catatonic Jung-sook (Ji-hye Yun), the bitchy rich girl, So-young (Jin-hie Park), the psychic Ji-oh (Gyu-ri Kim), and the needy Jae-yi (Se-yeon Choi). The four must withstand constant abuse and humiliation within a system that allows them little peace and no respect, so the very occasional ghostly violence is almost a relief for them. As Eun-young searches for the truth behind the deaths, it becomes clear that the girls will have to face the ghost, but first, they will have to stare off into nothingness for a very long time.
The thing I learned from Whispering Corridors is never go to a Korean school. Dictatorial, vicious, and degrading, it looks like a perfect breeding ground for psycho killers. Since I don’t know anything about Korean schools outside of Asian horror flicks, perhaps I’m overreacting. If so, then so is the Korean government, which tried to ban the film for painting a discouraging picture of their educational system. Hmmm. I think they protest too much.
Whispering Corridors is very successful at shining a light on the social status of young women in Korea, and asking questions about how they are taught and treated. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do that in a terribly entertaining fashion. I hated the system and teachers long before it was over, but I didn’t know any of the teachers. I hardly knew the students. There’s not much character development, and not much plot either. For you gore hounds, there’s not much blood. Keeping with this parallel sentence structure, there’s not much horror and not much of an explanation of anything. What is there? Staring. Lots of staring. And pausing, often accompanied by staring. If you can’t get enough of pausing and staring, then this is your movie.
Eun-young is as close to a protagonist as we’re given, but she doesn’t do anything. As a new teacher, she doesn’t teach. We never see her in a classroom. I can’t imagine why she wasn’t fired. She wanders around the grounds, stopping to stare, sometimes at a book, sometimes at a building, but most often, off into space. Jung-sook, who should have “red herring” painted on her forehead in neon green, only stares. That’s her role. She sits and stares and stands and stares. The others make sure to alternate their pausing and staring. First time director Ki-hyeong Park wants us to understand how important each and every line is by surrounding them with silence. That’s only a bit dull when someone is saying something about the murders or ghost, but it gets funny when we get the same long pauses around sentences like “Give me the cleaning buckets” and “Go back to the classroom and get a wash rag.”
I could have put up with the glacial pace if the payoff was more rewarding. There’s a nice twist which most people will see an hour earlier, and more pausing and staring. It’s not enough. There’s a good movie here (not great, but good) buried in all those pauses. Edit out thirty minutes and we’ve got something.
Whispering Corridors is one of the films that started the Asian-horror movement. The distributors would have you believe it is THE movie, but that honor goes to Ringu. However, it did have an effect, particularly in Korea where it spawned three sequels to date. If you’re a fan of the movement, you won’t mind spending a slow hour and a half in these corridors.
It was followed by Whispering Corridors 2: Memento Mori (1999), Whispering Corridors 3: Wishing Stairs (2003), and Whispering Corridors 4: The Voice (2005).