Here is the latest installment of the Il Cento notti di orrore – One Hundred Nights of Horror series. There was a quite bit of lull from the last entry, which was up to Nos. 19, and now here we go with another set of Korean horror films. This is purely a matter of expediency and has little to do with the improved quality of Korean horror or any other consideration.
Now that most of the VOD services in the US— led by Netflix and Amazon Prime— appear to be quite happy to bring in Korean horror films with the time lag of sometimes only several months from the dates of their domestic theatrical debuts, they are easily accessible in North America more than ever. This is of course not necessarily the case with big domestic hits—horror or not—nabbed by a distribution company such as NEON and scheduled to play in the North American theaters, such as Colony, Hope and Whispering Waters (all of which have been reviewed in the official Koreanfilm.org site) and a few such as App the Horror which is yet (again, as of late August 2026) to find a North American distributor. But I will take whatever comes available, no complaints.
20. App the Horror 귀신 부르는 앱: 영 (South Korea, 2026). A Heart People Production, Distributed by Sambaek Sanghoe. International sales handled by Anthology21. Released theatrically February 18, 2026. Aspect ratio: 2.35:1, 1.37:1. 1 hour 27 minutes. “Unlock” 잠금해제. Director: Hyung Seul-woo. Cinematography: Um Jae-wan. Lighting: Kim Kang-min. Editor: Kim Ju-eun. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Seo Ji-hyung. Makeup: Kwak Hye-ryung. “Dawn Shift” 새벽출근. Director & Editor: Ko Hee-sub. Cinematography: Choi Jong-man. Lighting: Yoon Bang-su. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Jang Won. Makeup: Kim Do-hee. “Bound for Goseong,” 고성행. Director & Editor: Lee Sang-min. Cinematography: Kim Jong-su. Lighting: Park Jin-yong, Jung Jun-seok, Yoon Jung-mun, Choi Yong-gon. Music: Han Seo-jin, Lee Sung-kyung. Production Design: Kim Hye-rim. “Collector” 콜렉터. Director: Sun Jong-hoon. Cinematography: Ku Du-han. Lighting: Kim Ju-il. Editor: Kim Ju-eun. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Lim Hye-min. Makeup: Lee Eun-chong. “Oneself” 자신. Director: Son Min-jun. Cinematography: Um Jae-wan. Lighting: Kim Kang-min. Editor: Choi Ha-neul. Music: Kang Hyun-jung. Production Design: Kim Jin-ju, Shin Sang-min. Sound: Kim Beom-yu. “Ghost Gate Room” 귀문방. Director: Kim Seung-tae. Cinematography: Kim Min-guk, An Dong-min, Song Ji-yoon, Kwak Seung-hee. Costume Design: Shin Yu-jin, Yo Won. Makeup: Kim Do-hee, Hwang Yun-na. CAST: Kim Young-jae (Dong-ju), Kim Ju-a (Han-byeol), Yang Jo-a (Sun-young), Kim Hee-jung (Na-yeon), Park Seo-ji (Jin-seo), Kim Young-seon (Mother), Son Min-jun (Min-jun), Anupam Tripathi (Suneta), Im Ye-eun (Collector), Lee Seung-yeon (Eun-a), Kim Gyu-nam (Ha-rin), Kim A-cheon (Old Landlord). Accessed through Watcha Korea VOD, July 2026.
The anthology or portmanteau horror format has sustained itself in Korea for the last three decades. It has in fact been responsible for some of the stronger, and sometimes the more prestigious, horror projects, including the Three series, in which Kim Ji-woon and Park Chan-wook participated; Horror Stories (Min Kyu-dong, Jung Bum-sik, et al.); and more recent scrappy but decent examples like Body Parts. Given that many Korean filmmakers cut their teeth on short films, produced as school graduation projects for instance, they welcome the chance to show off their skills and style in a relatively brief form. The biggest drawback to the format is the gap in quality among episodes: it is a rare anthology horror film in which every episode is equally riveting, though examples that meet the criterion do exist, such as the British classic Dead of Night. The pre-made, binge-watch-oriented format of Netflix and other channels allows filmmakers to address this problem to a degree, as Guillermo del Toro did with his superb Cabinet of Curiosities. However, for a feature film, say, two golden nuggets out of five, sitting alongside three bars of lead or balls of tinfoil, could bring down the value of the whole enterprise considerably.
App the Horror, an unfortunate title which sounds as dorky and uncommitted in English as in Korean, is based on the premise that a high school tech club has created a phone app supposedly letting you see and contact the ghosts, a very thin thread that really does not do much to connect the installments with one another. Despite this potentially frivolous premise, the overall atmosphere is cool and moody, with little low-rent humor or trendy gimmicks that usually characterize these films. Let us proceed from the lackluster and okay to the good and excellent, ignoring the order in which the segments appear.
The opener “Unlock” simply works as an introductory piece in which the said high school students invoke dead spirits through an elaborate ritual, amusingly (for me at least) supervised by a long-haired, suit-dressed guy seemingly modeled after Hieda Reijiro from the Yokai Hunter series. Very little to be said about it, even though the atmosphere it evokes is nicely very the late ‘90s-oughts J-horror. “Dawn Shift” deals with two women who work for a death and decomposition cleanup service (also the background of Somebody), running into a ghost of a possible suicide victim. Director Ko Hee-sup is a veteran of web-dramas including Kim Min-chul starrer Replay: The Moment (2021), and not surprisingly, better at capturing realistic banters and frustrations of two women than scaring the viewers. “Collector” is the most straightforward and uncomplicated segment in the film, simply a string of booga-ooga scare sequences, about a very angry spirit murdered by a man taking illicit pictures of her with his smartphone, who haunt a discarded-lost handphone chop-shop crew member (competently essayed by the New Delian-Korean resident Tripathi, who broke out internationally playing Ali Abdul in Squid Game). The scare effects are actually the most effective in the film, but the episode has almost no content to speak of.
“Ghost Gate Room” has the flavor of a folk horror film in which an unsuspecting visitor falls victim to incomprehensible and sinister rites of a local community, in this case the site of the ritual turns out to be a nondescript one-room apartment unit managed by a creepy, possibly senile landlord. Although the denouement is predictable, the film, directed by Kim Seung-tae, responsible for a low-budget alternate-universe SF Dream Maker (2021), does a fairly good job of wrangling suspense out of furtively glimpsed pagan (quasi-shamanistic) rituals and increasing anxiety of the protagonist (Kim Gyu-nam, TV drama Love Your Enemy). Like a number of other recent Korean films, it does touch on one of the believable anxieties of the MZ generation Koreans (especially females) that their rare-find urban abode is figuratively (of course literally so in this film) a gate into Hell.
This brings us to the two standout episodes in the movie. "Oneself," filmed in an extremely contrasty, color-saturated style, deals with a disabled middle-aged man, played by the director Son Min-jun, whose short film Cut (2018) also played with the concept of subjective reality in a horror setting, who is cared for in a run-down facility and tormented by blood-drenched female spirits. Viewers soon learn, however, that this initially sympathetic figure harbors a sinister secret. Rather gory and nasty, the segment is also infused with surrealistic, religiously inflected visuals, and ultimately delivers a sort of meditation on the Buddhist notion of karmic retribution: can being tormented by a deteriorating and dysfunctional body constitute sufficient moral punishment for heinous deeds that took the lives of other people?
Another standout segment, "Bound for Goseong," written and directed by Lee Sang-min, who has since made the huge hit Whispering Waters, is the only one shot in the 1.37:1 ratio. It deals with the anxiety and terror of Jin-seo, a snooty high schooler reluctantly riding a bus to Goseong at the arrangement of her pushy mother, who has promised a vague improvement in her academic performance and other sundry benefits once she arrives. Confined mostly to the interior of the bus, the episode displays a subdued sense of humor as the driver remains utterly indifferent to the seemingly irrational presence of a creepy passenger; it ends, of course, in a clever, morally disturbing payoff, by which viewers are made to feel genuinely sympathetic toward Jin-seo. It is a rather effective intimate-space horror piece and displays Lee's capacity to wrangle excellent performances out of archetypal characters, the trait that helped Whispering Waters emerge as a commercial success.
On the whole, App the Horror, despite its unexciting conceptual hook, is an above-average Korean anthology horror film. We will continue to see the movies with portmanteau format produced in Korea, given that short-form content shows little sign of abating. Whether such reliance on the format can generally improve the proportion of good segments over lukewarm or bad ones remains to be seen. ☆☆☆★
21. The Unrighteous 원정빌라(South Korea, 2024). A K Dragon Production, Distributed by Smile Entertainment (international distribution: KT Alpha). Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, 1 hour 27 minutes. Director: Kim Sun-kook (feature debut). Producer: Kim Hee-young. Cinematography: Choi Won-wook, Cho Young-dae. Music: Lim Dae-hwan. Released theatrically December 4, 2024. CAST: Lee Hyun-woo (Joo-hyun), Moon Jung-hee (Shin-hye), Bang Min-ah (Yu-jin), Sung Byung-sook (Young-sun), Jung Min-sung (Moon-su), Lee Jae-gu, Ko Ju-ni, Noh Ji-hoon. Watched at the 2024 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival, available at Amazon Prime as of August 2026.
Joo-hyun (Lee Hyun-woo, TV drama Cinderella at 2 am), splitting his days between a bank security post and cram sessions for the real estate broker's exam, shares Unit 203 of an apartment complex called Wonjeong Villa—badly in need of renovation, apparently located somewhere in Busan City—with his ailing mother Yeong-seon (Sung Byung-sook) and his niece Ye-ji. Almost immediately, he gets picked on for parking space disputes and floor-noise complaints by Shin-hye (Moon Jung-hee, The Day I Died), the sneering tenant in Unit 303 directly above him. He, out of petty annoyance, stuffs her mailbox with a wad of brochures advertising for local church services. What he could not have anticipated was that Shin-hye becomes an ardent believer and proselytizer for the ministry of Pastor Jung Mun-su (Jung Min-sung, Exit, Paradise). Soon, most of the apartment residents, including Joo-hyun’s own mother, fall under the thrall of the oily pastor, singing and praising the lord in group meetings. With the help of Yu-jin (Bang Min-a, the vocalist of K-pop group Girl’s Day but also seasoned TV actress: Delivery Man, Beautiful Gong Shim), a neighborhood pharmacist with a personal interest in deprogramming cult members, Joo-hyun attempts to break the hold of the pastor’s hold on his mother, despite the harassment and persecution campaign by the cult that gets him fired from his job. But then he learns, to his shock and panic, that the latter are preparing an unspeakable ritual replicating Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in the most literal form possible—with his niece as a potential offering.
The Unrighteous is one of the Korean films I caught at BiFan but was unable to write about in time for the festival report. It in fact shares an angle with The Ritual, in its exploration of the dark side of Christian faiths that slip into the status of heretical cults. The film's message could be neatly summarized by the tagline on its poster: "Trust not thy neighbor." The serpentine hostility of the villa residents, and their indifference to the real suffering of fellow community members, are presented methodically and with a flavor of authentic social observation, often camouflaged by concerns about the resale value of their apartments and ensconced in the hypocritical language of spiritual care and religious faith.
The principals are adequate to good in their characterizations, with Bang Min-a a standout as a cool-headed, sharp-looking investigator. There is an inevitable surprise revelation about her identity, which is very much in the manner of Korean TV drama and frankly redundant. Director-writer Kim Seon-guk, for whom The Unrighteous is a feature debut, does a good job of wrangling credible performances out of the cast, although the direction occasionally reminds one of reading a webtoon rather than watching a work of cinema. The fiery climax is rather clumsily staged, failing to generate real terror or to draw viewers into the horrified consciousness of Joo-hyun, obviously the intended effect.
The film is marred by low production values, including its use of AI-generated imagery in the end titles. It is one of those genre films that are more interesting for their subject matter and approach than for their filmmaking acumen or aesthetic accomplishment. It is too depressing to be a fun time-waster but not refined or creative enough to be a truly memorable horror film. Nonetheless, it deserves credit for telling this story of (Christian) faith going frighteningly haywire with a measure of gumption and commitment. ☆☆★★★
22. The Ritual (a.k.a. The Favor) 구원자 (South Korea, 2025). A Mayday Studio-Studio Big Us Production, Presented by Studio Big Us. Co-produced by iFilm Corporation and Grida Studio, Distributed by Mindmark. Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, 1 hour 43 minutes. Director: Shin Jun. Screenplay: Kang Da-hee. Producers: Jung Hyun, Lee Jung-seok. Released theatrically November 5, 2025. CAST: Kim Byung-chul (Young-beom), Song Ji-hyo (Sun-hee), Kim Hieora (Chun-seo), Jin Yu-chan (Jong-hoon), Oh Han-gyeol (Min-jae), Ahn Se-ho (Dong-jin). Watched through subscription: July 2026, Amazon Prime.
Young-beom (Kim Byung-chul, The Guard Post,Best Friend), a physician, relocates to a run-down country town, believing that this would prove beneficial, if not physically then at least spiritually, for his high-schooler son Jong-hoon (Jin Yu-chan), paralyzed from the waist down, as well as his wife Sun-hee (Song Ji-hyo, Unstoppable, Intruder), whose eyesight is gradually deteriorating. One day on a routine errand, Young-beom runs over an old man (Kim Seol-jin) on the pitch-dark road. He makes a critical mistake of bringing the seemingly mortally wounded old man, hideously scarred with the apparently scorched skins and hands, to his tool shed. One thing leads to another and the creepy old man ends up touching his son, who is instantly cured of his disability. Sun-hee, convinced that their family was touched by a miracle, joins a church at the nearby village Obok-ri, where she is encouraged to testify to the blessed event. However, things begin to take a dark turn when she learns that one of the church’s most devoted member, Chun-seo (the musical actress Kim Hieora, best known for Frida: The Last Night Show, based on Frida Kahlo’s life), has a son, Min-jae, who suddenly developed a crippling disability identical to Jong-hoon’s, precisely on the day that the latter was cured.
The Ritual is the sophomore feature from writer-director Shin Jun, whose debut, Yongsoon, a coming-of-age story about a young girl, received good notices at the 2016 Busan International Film Festival. It belongs to the tradition of a horror story as a moral fable —think of "The Monkey's Paw," or even of the current megahit Obsession, different though its flavor is —that highlights the spiritual cost of having your dearest wishes come true. An evangelical Christian inflection is strong here as well, although in The Ritual it functions less as an actual theme than as a socio-cultural background that shapes how the "miracles" are interpreted. Shin suggests rather than states the problem with Obok-ri, a small town whose reputation for miraculous cures has sustained its church: the signs are kept vaguely disquieting, a cross on a pew that resembles a blotch of spilled blood, for instance, and the town ignores altogether those it has ruined, like Min-jae and Chun-seo, the real victims of these so-called miracles.
The film is lugubrious and takes itself too seriously, not to mention too bloody and gory in spots, but the moral conflicts that Young-beom's family wrestles with are compelling and manage to hold the viewer's interest until the end, helped by energetic performances from the leads. Song Ji-hyo, one of the most beautiful Korean actresses of the last two decades, has actively sought out character roles since her mega-success on the variety show Running Man: here she appears almost mousy, deliberately made to look pinched and unflattering, but the effect is not quite convincing. It would have worked better had her character been given a more active part to play opposite Kim Byung-chul. The biggest contributors to the proceedings are probably the special effects makeup team at Gepeto (Yun Hyang-jik, Kim Se-hee), who designed the old man's progressive deterioration in disgustingly realistic detail, as well as the "marks" left by the miraculous touch, which look like fingerprints and brands at once.
The Ritual is a moderately interesting Korean horror film that attempts to go a bit further than the routine genre exercise, but it cannot quite scale the heights of similarly dour but compelling works about impossible moral choices, such as Somebody and Song Ji-hyo's own Intruder. ☆☆☆
As for the industry statistics, The Unrighteous barely played the theatrical market at all, collecting fewer than 18,000 tickets on no more than 164 screens. The Ritual, a.k.a. The Favor, did somewhat better, selling 34,000 tickets, but the figure is still disappointing given that the film stars Song Ji-hyo, a legitimate star actress. (For a comparison, Song's Intruder sold approximately 530,000 tickets, a solid hit but still not enough to make up for its relatively big production budget.) The clear commercial winner among the three films covered here is App the Horror, which raked in 101,537 tickets but we are not sure if this was sufficient to cover the film’s production cost.
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