Leofwine_draca WHISPERING CORRIDORS is a pretty interesting South Korean ghost story, set in a girl's school haunted by the spirit of a dead student. Released in the same year as RING, the Japanese hit that was to inspire dozens of derivative knock offs, its pleasing to see that this film avoids the clichés for the most part. There's no long-haired, white-faced girl ghost here, just a melancholy spirit with a knack for bumping off brutal teachers in increasingly violent ways.The film is full of atmosphere. Indeed, the story is stretched out almost to breaking point, and the pacing extremely slow – especially around the midsection. The eerie atmosphere keeps you watching, along with an effective soundtrack full of those low, almost distorted notes (also used in RING) that instantly send a shudder down the spine. The low budget here is evident, and some of the performances are a little rough around the edges, but there was nothing that stopped me enjoying this.Even the 'Hollywood style' stalk-and-slash moments are well portrayed, especially an extended showdown between cruel teacher Mad Dog and the unseen spirit. Things get a little muddled at the climax – as they do in so many of these films – where twist comes upon twist in a short space of time. Personally, I would have preferred the surprises to be more spread out, but nonetheless the denouement impresses. This isn't grandstanding horror, and indeed it's not a film that I'll rush to watch again. But as an example of Asian horror, you could do a lot worse. A sequel, MEMENTO MORI, followed.

Nitzan Havoc I'm only writing this review on account of a personal project of mine. I decided a few months back to write reviews about all Horror films I'd watch, in order to have sort of a library of reviews and remember my experiences with each film. Unfortunately, I am unable to be objective nor subjective about Whispering Corridors.While watching, I was unintentionally and uncontrollably hindered by two things. The first - I'm not sure if I found a bad translation, or if the Korean language is really as such. I'm afraid it was the first option, as I have no idea how 3 sentences could be summarized in 5 words. Half the time of most dialogues the screen was empty of text. As a translator, a poet and a former teacher - I know that no translation ever captures 100% of the original meaning, but in this case I couldn't help but feeling that I wasn't being exposed to lots of information, however redundant. And the second problem I experienced was my inability to differentiate the Korean female students. I am not at all racist, but they all seemed too much alike, and their names sounded too much alike... I guess I haven't seen enough Asian films and/or Asian people in my life, and I realize this is a shortcoming of myself and my life, and not the film.Taking all the aforementioned into account, I was completely robbed the film's twist, as I could barely understand. I was only able to interpret the music (which was excellent, by the way) and the event, but not completely experience the twist as someone who'd been successful in following and keeping up with the entire film would have. Therefore, I feel I cannot with a clear conscience rate this film. I can say good music and interesting dramatic shooting and cinematography, but that's all. And without being able to have an opinion of the acting,and most importantly the story - one cannot rate. So I can't recommend the film, and I can't criticize it. It did, however, feel to me like I missed out.

refresh daemon I really didn't expect much going into this film. I think I'd been burned by too many mediocre horror movies featuring ghosties in the past, so to watch one of the grandmamas of the modern Asian ghost girl genre had me bracing for every trite conceit that could be thrown my way. Whispering Corridors surprised me. Rather than really being a flashy story about hauntings and killings, it turns out more to be an exploration of the impact of the brutal South Corean high school system on the youth that attend it, using the horror genre as the medium.First of all, I have to say that I wasn't frightened during this film. Not even for a brief moment. Rather than suspense and thrills, I was hooked into the mystery and dramatic elements that were at play. The way that the story is spun, there's no question as to who the ghost was or why it's doing the haunting, but rather, what the ghost's secret is. Now, astute viewers will pick up in the first few scenes of the film what we're looking for and I even managed to make the correct guess at it--although I really just had to watch to have my guess confirmed.Another interesting aspect of the story is that there are three stories going on. One about an artistic student trying to express herself in a system that cares little for her expression, another about a former student who returns as a teacher trying to make peace with her memories and the last about a student rivalry between a model student and the second-rank peer. The strength of this approach is that we anticipate the collision of the separate story lines and are rewarded when they do collide. The weakness of the approach is that the story has to juggle three (well, really two--the third is a B-story) protagonists and sometimes seems to suffer from a lack of focus.The film was clearly made in an era of Corean film-making that hasn't yet reached its more modern proficiency and the equipment/film stock used will have an almost grindhouse/direct-to-video feel to it for those who are only used to modern American/European cinema. Nevertheless, while the directing nor acting is spectacular, it is presented sufficiently as not to serve as a detraction from the story.All in all, this is actually a pretty decent film, even if it's not as much of a horror film as I was expecting. The interesting intertwined story lines and the use of horror to explore societal and personal burdens (and with some measure of tact) left me pleasantly surprised with Whispering Corridors. I can't recommend it to all viewers as the aesthetics might turn off those only looking for beautiful films and those looking for scary ghost or gorefests will be horribly disappointed. But this is an interesting look at the Corean high school experience as well as an intriguing mystery. So, recommended to those with open minds and a willingness to look past the genre for the story within. 8/10.

MAXIMUMMOVIE I picked up "Whispering Corridors" hoping it would be as impressive as the other top notch South Korean horror movie that have come out over the past five years or so but have to say I was disappointed. Although not an awful movie it seemed to move along as is just waiting for the right time to end. It lacked any real "scare" value. The story wasn't bad but not overly interesting. Given I always watch subtitles I tend to avoid judging the acting as much as possible because I think the delivery of a line is a large part of acting, therefore me not understanding it in whole seems unfair to the actor. In the case of "Whispering Corridors" the acting was notable sluggish and at times annoying. If you're an Asian film buff it's a movie to check out but don't get to excited about. If your not an Asian film buff I wouldn't suggest it for you.