What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?

Whispering Corridors

Whispering Corridors
Yeogo Goedam
(1998)

     A teacher, Mrs. Park, wasn't very well liked and considered cruel and harsh by her students is killed and hung from one the the buildings while she was investigating a matter involving a former student one night. The next morning a group of girls discover her body when arriving early for cleaning duty and everyone assumes that Mrs. Park killed herself. The principal makes the girls promise not to spread any rumors about their former teacher and singles out Ji-oh as the one who will receive all the punishment if any word leaks out. While Ji-oh, who was the first to discover the body, tries to cope with being the principal's number one target and the feelings that Mrs. Park's death has left her with and her ability to contact the dead, a former student turned teacher, Ms. Hur tries to unravel the mystery that surrounds Mrs. Park's death and its relation to her best friend Jin-ju who passed away nine years prior.


You Learn Something New Everyday...

Perfume is for shamans and shamans are slutty.
Korean teachers are abusive.
Picking your nose in public is socially acceptable if you're principal.
"Damnit" is a long word in Korean.

Zing!

None.

Survey SAYS...

     The first thing that I want to start off saying is, one of my new pet peeves is blatant false advertising of films. Now, unless I'm the one with the wrong definition of what constitutes a horror flick, then people need to learn how to market their movies a little better. I'm not saying that a movie has to be scary for it to be a horror flick, but the mood of the movie should try to be creepy and I think death should play a big part because that's what makes a horror movie a horror movie. Death and senseless destruction. Taboos and the over all sense that there's something bigger to life then what we just see. This can involve any thing from ghosts to murderers, cults to rabid animals, or aliens to satanists. Anyway, the point is that when you go into a movie and you've heard this or that about it then you expect a certain type of movie. For me, when I sit down and watch a movie that is classified as a “horror” flick then I expect for the movie to be creepy or to at least try to scare me. If it's a comedy, then I expect to laugh at least once. Now, not only was I told this was a horror movie, but the preview (which I watched afterwards) made it seem like I was going to watch a scary ass movie. They even ripped off The Exorcist theme music. Anyway, enough useless ranting.

     The camera work was really shaky for the first bit of the movie and the cinematography was extremely ghetto for being from 1998. It looked more like a film from the 70s. The movie starts off with a murder, but once the murder happens it becomes merely background noise, in fact it doesn't seem to play any part in the movie at all except for the B story-line involving Ms. Hur who's really trying to cope with the loss of her good friend nine years prior and how she felt responsible. Most of the movie is focused on Ji-oh who is kind of an outcast and the abuse she receives from the principal who hates her.

     The movie description makes it sound like a lot of the students die and there's a lot of covering up done. A total of three people die. Two were horrible people that deserved it and one killed herself for a totally unrelated reason. I could see why they would want to cover up the teacher's deaths, why would they want to tell tehir students that two teachers committed suicide in the school halls? The student death was never covered up. Whispering Corridors was actually a very good movie that was more about friendship and social norms that people have to live up to. In the background there's a murder mystery and eventually a ghost story taking place. When I was watching it with the expectations of a horror movie, it was lame and boring and nothing ever really happened. However, the story became really involving and interesting as just a regular movie. I really started to enjoy the movie a lot after that. I actually found it touching and totally relatable.

     One thing about Korean films though. I have to be honest with you, I kind of got lost in what was happening because I had a hard time figuring out who was who. The Korean names used in this film all seemed to be so similar. I'm glad the ending wasn't ambiguous because I never would've figured out what the heck was going on. I only just figured out what the numbers Mrs. Park was circling and the yearbooks were all about as I was typing this. So, if you like bleeding walls, severed ears, extreme facial close ups, freeze framing, artsy camera work, and disturbingly easy access to scalpels, then this is the flick for you. As for us, we give Whispering Corridors:

No Burt Reynolds Here! No Burt Reynolds Here! No Burt Reynolds Here!

That Wasn't so Bad Was It?



pleased
I was left Feeling: Pleased