Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is a 2018 South Korean found-footage horror film directed by Yoon-gi Yeom and Lee Jun-woo. The movie takes inspiration from the urban legend of Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital, which was a real institution in South Korea known for its isolation and reported mistreatment of patients. The story revolves around a group of friends, all amateur horror enthusiasts, who decide to create a web series featuring a live broadcast from an abandoned asylum. The group, consisting of Shin ji-hyun (Kim Sun-young), a director, and her crew, including PD (Park Sung-joon), a producer, and camera operators, come together to capture the eerie atmosphere of the long-abandoned Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital. To add an air of authenticity to their web series, the crew decides to broadcast their experience live from the asylum, hoping to attract a large and engaged audience. However, they soon realize that they are not alone in the abandoned building. The darkness and isolation of the hospital's corridors seem to amplify their deepest fears as they start to experience inexplicable events. As the night wears on, the crew begins to unravel the hospital's macabre history, which is marked by reports of inhumane treatment, unexplained patient deaths, and mysterious disappearances. An old newsreel footage of the hospital in its operating days reveals tales of unwholesome medical experiments and brutality committed by the hospital's administrators. At first, the crew dismisses these elements as mere urban legends, but as the night gathers pace, the line between reality and the nightmarish atmosphere blurs, and they encounter inexplicable signs of a life-force presence lurking within the hospital's walls. The tension escalates when the main character, Ji-hyun, goes missing. Searching desperately for their missing companion, the remaining crew members delve deeper into the depths of the asylum. Confusion grows as some of the crew seem to be experiencing vivid hallucinations. It becomes a question of their perceptions, their judgments and sanity. Furthermore, tension arises among the dwindling crew as rumors spread about Ji-hyun's supposed 'explanation' of the events being observed. A second tier of plot revolves around some other, supposed ex-patients whose tales seemingly weave unsettling predictions into their own tragic stories. As the film takes a further descent into a more entangled mess, hints emerge that the hospital itself is, after all, quite real. Far from the promised fresh take on online presence, Gonjiam's narrative turns itself more upon horror genre, emphasizing an existential dread, when the boundaries between reality, urban legends, and their perceptions being haunted gradually disfigure. By employing such method of a 'live-broadcast,' this found-footage horror has been capable of capturing that particular set of perceptions - being under siege by those unseen forces whose grim and hushed meanings may amount but an implausible mystery of how truly unsuddenly an inescapable peril finally happened. The fact the film offers makes the night before feel unexpectedly and relentlessly immersive is what creates a fearful tension which doesn't care who. This goes without saying that each character brings an individual fear as a unique, separate component without actually doing anything like, having fear in an obviously intense circumstance. Everyone else is anxious about, knowing what to expect, about themselves. Unmasking themes often associated with Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum indicates the terrible power imposed when man-made, human-made hell is unleashed in space, i.e., when humanity fails in humane behavior is brought out to brutalized real victims- the very root of sadism. Through these characters, and their foppish reactions, Gonjiam draws you right through situations you too surely can't grasp; the film maintains that tension. The fears and panic of trapped victims capture the real human condition - 'Human is very, very base.'