What a view | Korean Netflix show Goedam packs a punch with haunting horror shorts
- The eight-part series spins city-centric tales of trepidation that shivers spines in short blasts of seven to 15 minutes
- Beneath the blood, gore and violence there lingers an overall, creepy dread
There is a secondary school somewhere in South Korea that must have record rates for absenteeism brought on by supernatural horrors. Honestly, how can today’s youngsters be expected to learn anything when suicidal pupils wind up being cut in half and leaving a terrible mess in the classroom, zombies stalk the echoing stairwells, and you can’t even sneak off to the toilets for a crafty cigarette without a liberally bloodied ghoul crawling out of an adjacent cubicle?
In fairness, the problems extend beyond the education system – to inter-dimensional elevators, taxis with killer ghosts in the back seat, temples with shamans practising black magic and even flats stuffed with misbehaving Ikea furniture, all locations ripe for a gory or mind-warping haunting in Goedam (Netflix).
An eight-part, first-series anthology of city-centric tales of trepidation (“goedam” means “urban ghost stories”), it shivers spines in short blasts of seven to 15 minutes, packing in its punches and avoiding narrative over-elaboration.
Starring, among others, Shim So-young, Lee Hyun-joo, Song Chae-yun, Jung Young-ki and Cosmic Girls vocalist Seola, Goedam makes for a rapid-fire binge-watch digestible in one sitting: perfect for the attention-span challenged, perhaps an hors d’oeuvre for those with schedules emancipated by Covid-19.
Beneath the violence and bloody interior-decoration schemes there lingers an overall, creepy dread to a series that even squeezes in an Alien homage: rib-tickling fun.
(*The second half of this week’s column comes with a PG certificate.)