Gon-ji-am / Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) - Solid found footage scares in sinister locations - 7/10 (23/10/18)

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is a found footage horror film in the key of The Blair Witch Project, Quarantine and Grave Encounters. It follows a group of three young women and three young men who want to explore abandoned Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital where several patients committed suicide and the director went missing.

The story offers nothing new to the genre and is quite predictable from start to finish. Parts of the final third are confusing and tough to follow. Two of the six main characters remain rather faceless and the movie should have focused on the four more developed characters only.

On the other side, the film gradually shifts from a light-hearted tone to a bleak supernatural horror film and the last third is particularly intense. The locations are carefully chosen and the fact that this building exists for real makes the movie more authentic. The manipulative group leader, the shy youngster, the expressive Korean-American and the naive nurse student are all interesting characters that complement one another perfectly. The fact that some of the scares turn out being made up while others are truly supernatural phenomenons adds a little twist which makes it hard for the viewer to know what's fake and what's real. Despite a low budget and the use of handhold cameras and simplistic drones, the movie is filmed with care and doesn't overuse shaky parts.

In the end, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is an entertaining film for horror cinema fans and one of the better found footage horror films in recent memory. It doesn't reinvent the genre and the story could have been a little bit more creative but the scares work out rather well and the final thirty minutes will keep you on the edge of your seat.