The Closet

Kwang-bin Kim's full length directorial debut, Keullojet (the Closet) 2020, is clearly influenced not only by the Ringu series of films but also well-established themes in Asian horror (eg a vindictive female ghost). However there is a lot more to Keullojet. The atmosphere created beautifully compliments the themes which the film conveys and the acting, esp by Jung-wu Ha and Nam-gil Kim, is excellent. As such Keullojet becomes more than something like the tacky Insidious (yet another movie which clearly influenced the second act) and presents a well-scripted secondary layer to it. 7/10.

Non-creatively borrowed (to say politely) theme elements done many times before. 1. Family with tragic history go to live in an isolated house with a past. 2. Usual vengeful spirit inhabiting some hidden space (this case a done before closet). 3. A child is the object of the spirit's attention who also happens to be a child. A stuffed toy as prop, of course. 4. Brief appearances by said spirit-child to possess the human child & bring her into the spirit world. 5. A bit of newspaper digging brings up past child disappearances. 6. A spirt hunter cartoonishly shows up & brings the usual electrical magnetic field detectors to locate spirits, but as any high school student will tell you they're only good at telling you that electricity is in the house - duh! 7. Usual circle of candles w/drumming, chants, and ancient textbook showing pictures of nasty spirits.

Name a korean horror movie. I've seen it. Where did all the good korean horror from the early 2000s go ? Somehow people thought "The Wailing" was a great movie and now everyone is trying to copy it. Exorcism, Shamanism everywhere. Where did the subtle creeping up your brain horror go ? This movie is like an american exorcism movie. It even has jump scares. It starts rather promising but becomes kinda uncreative quick. I have seen most of this somewhere before, in a better form, in an US movie(Insidious). That's not the kind of horror I want from a korean horror movie. Theres a hundred better US movies with that topic out there. Not impressed at all.

Korea is fastly becoming one of my favorite countries to produce horror films. Train to Busan is one of my favorite modern horror films and after watching the closet, it's not far behind. It's creepy, well written, well acted and left me in a ball of tears at the end. Highly recommend this film

I'm not normally the guy who watches a movie with subtitles, But I have before and I was against watching this one, but my wife talked me into it and really, after twenty minutes or so, I was all in. It's a nice take on the American movie Poltergeist. Kid gets taken to the realm of the dead through a closet. I will say the acting, as far as the kids, was superb. The adults did a fine job too, but to see that range in kids that young is astonishing. Over all I think this movie did the horror genre a great job. I recommend it to anyone looking for a decent horror flick. Peace.