Review | Ghost Mansion movie review: Korean horror anthology sees webtoon artist visit haunted apartment to turn curse into a bestseller
- The mansion carries a curse that leads its residents to their death or worse, but the stories about five former tenants do not deliver many chills
- While individual vignettes do create moments of tension, the stories are repetitive, predictable and frustrating
2.5/5 stars
Digital comics known as webtoons are proving a fertile source of material for South Korea’s booming media industry. Many recent K-drama hits, including Sweet Home and Itaewon Class, were adapted from the popular new medium, while blockbuster franchise Along with the Gods also began life on the virtual page.
Ghost Mansion, a horror anthology film from first-time director Jo Ba-reun, aims to return the compliment, spinning a yarn about a struggling webtoon artist who ventures into a supposedly haunted apartment complex looking for new material.
Legend has it that Gwang-lim Mansions carries a deadly curse that infects its residents, leading to their disappearance, death, or worse. After his first webtoon failed to make a splash, Ji-woo (Sung Joon) hopes to learn about the building’s supernatural past from its former caretaker (Kim Hong-pa), and fashion it into a potential bestseller.
When they meet, Ji-woo is told five stories about five former tenants, each of whom fell foul of malevolent manifestations in their own homes. While the individual vignettes of Ghost Mansion create moments of tension within their self-contained stories, the similarities that Jo is eager to emphasise between them ultimately lead to repetition, predictability, and frustration.
One of the few genuine pleasures one can hope to glean from an anthology film is from the eclectic juxtaposition of styles and influences brought to the project by the various filmmakers involved. With Jo at the helm of all five segments here, as well as the wraparound narrative, the film suffers from a lack of variety.