Review | The Closet film review: Korean horror, starring Ha Jung-woo, is flimsy and implausible and does not live up to the strong start
- Ha Jung-woo stars as a widowed architect whose daughter vanishes – the latest in a string of disappearances of young children in the area
- The opening is suitably unsettling but the film almost immediately loses the viewer’s attention as unsympathetic characters behave implausibly at every turn
1.5/5 stars
A pair of impactful sequences open The Closet, the new supernatural chiller from first-time director Kim Kwang-bin. The film begins with home video footage of an exorcism from 1998, in which a female shaman dies horribly at the hands of an unseen presence.
The scene offers heavy-handed, yet effective foreshadowing of Sang-won’s plight, after his own daughter, Ina (Heo Yool), is abducted by a malevolent spirit living in the wardrobe of their new, and secluded, home.
Unfortunately, the film loses its way almost immediately, as unsympathetic characters behave implausibly at every turn, and Kim fails to sustain the unsettling atmosphere of his opening.
Sang-won’s behaviour defies logic from the outset. After losing his wife in a car accident, he moves his traumatised daughter to a large house in the woods. No sooner have they moved in than Sang-won installs a nanny whom he has never met, and leaves for the city to oversee an important construction project. Ina starts acting up almost immediately, the nanny bails, and Ina disappears into the closet.