Lingering

This was a super okay movie, but it leaned towards the "meh" side more than the "good" side. The whole premise of the film is very formulaic and has been done plenty of times before in plenty of different movies. But the difference with this movie in comparison to all the other "unwilling-sibling/guardian/parent-takes-care-of-child-and-has-evil-encounter-and-then-becomes-willing-at-the-end" films, this one just didn't have any character development, not great acting, and not an original enough story to be engaging at all. It built suspense quite well and there were some nice jump scares in it, but beyond some good setup, decent acting, and legitimate scares every now and then, this one just isn't special.

I found this film while looking for Korean horror films.

I considered giving it a go after reading the synopsis and glancing at the movie poster, but I was mistaken. What an awful film.

There are strange events. Dark, gloomy hotel maintained by the owner with only one employee. Staff members engage in bizarre talk and frequently drinking. The characters go to a basement around three or four times even though no one should be there.

But what is the major narrative? I didn't understand any of it. Why did the friend of her mother do this? Does a spirit truly exist? What actually happened to her mother? Anyway.

The movie didn't appeal to me.

I wouldn't suggest seeing this movie repeatedly.

The movie has some paranormal scenes randomly thrown in there just so it can call itself a horror movie. The few paranormal scenes it has relied heavily on jump scares while abusing the horrible audio balancing. The last 30 minutes of the movie completely throws away the idea of it being a paranormal movie and renders all the previous paranormal scenes meaningless. It's like the writers couldn't decide what they want the plot of the movie to be.

The audio is really quiet throughout the movie making you want to turn up the volume to just to hear the characters talk, but suddenly has insanely high volume for the jump scare scenes.

The script is a ball of confusion and the horror element takes a back seat to way too much family drama. The struggle/fight sequences are unconvincing.

How do films like this get financed? Incredibly dull all around.

Wanting the best for her friends' daughter, a woman decides to take her to a remote hotel in the countryside to help out her aunt who runs it, but the longer they stay there they become convinced that something is wanting the girl forcing her to discover the secret connection with it's past to save her.

Overall, the film manages to get quite a lot right. One of its better aspects is the films' ability to offer up a heartwarming story at the center between the two girls despite not being related. Doing the journey as a favor for her friend, the bond that develops, as a result, is impressively handled as it's quite possible to believe they are related through the interactions and protective nature that forms here as she tries to keep the girl out of trouble. Once we're aware of the protective and motherly focus at the center of the film, the slow emergence of the horror elements towards the daughter becomes all the more frightening. Those horror elements are another enjoyable and entertaining aspect present here. Starting slowly with the odd disembodied creaking noise or whisper in the darkness, a discovery about the past connections to the hotel and the payoff to a series of innocent children's games provides a nice framework for the later scenes of the spirit lingering around the hotel. The constant appearance of the spirit through several decent jump-scares do help this even more with the attack on the spiritualist she calls in to help out or the search through the darkened ruins of the hotel basement, as does the spirited finale which adds some life and some decent gore to this one, altogether giving this one some positive aspects. That said, there are a few issues throughout here. The main problem is the general routine-ness and overly familiar feeling brought up, featuring yet another in a long list of films about black-haired female ghosts targeting innocent people. There's nothing new to the formula or has a clever twist, it's simply running through the same storyline beats in a new locale which is about the only original feature on display here, which goes to show the level of creativity present since even using the location of a hotel doesn't offer a lot of creativity or ingenuity in the film. The other problem is the general lack of apathy created when it's not centered around the two girls. There's very little of any interest derived from the investigation of what happened in the hotels' past that connects her to the history of what happened and most of the side characters adding in doing so serve no purpose in the film that couldn't have been done without them anyway rendering everything with a bland feel. Aided by the slack tempo that keeps everything at a one-note feel regardless of what's happening, these overall bring the film down.

Rated Unrated/R: Language, Violence and children-in-jeopardy.