Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Cihan "Sean Victorydawn" Vercan (CihanVercan) The look of the murky and desolate school corridors where sunlight cannot reach during the afternoon lessons had always given me the creeps. This movie was on the silver-screen while I was in Grade-10, in Turkey. My friends have gone to see it, yet they were so indisposed afterwards. However couple weeks before its screening, we've seen a Jennifer-Love Hewitt flick "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" that was when we had finished that horror movie with belly laughs and roll in the aisles. I was curious to see and to know what was not to laugh of somebody's frightening of ghosts. Somehow, even though my friends were irritated of it, Whispering Corridors made a good box-office hit in Turkey. It must have inspired some serious masses, that in the first decade of 2000s' Turkish Horror-Suspense Fiction have used remarkable pieces from Whispering Corridors whether directly or indirectly. Then Taylan Brothers adapted a low-quality copycat from this already adapted adaptation. Making double adaptation for a piece of art didn't make sense on the payoff and the viewer felt it thoroughly. No one ever liked this adaptation; and it remained as a pathetic Turkish version: Okul(2004). That failure of Turkish cinema made me search for its origin. Yet till yesterday I hadn't have a chance to see this psycho-horror.Now watching it for the first time after 10 years of its release, it's clear to realize that Horror is no Horror if there is no Psycho in it. Whispering Corridors is para-psychologically successful and realistic. People know in secret that these types of extra-ordinary and super-natural happenings do really occur in real life.The story takes place on a country-side all-girl private school in South Korea, the year 1998. Presumably on a Sunday, the day before the new semester starts, the president of the teachers' committee of the school(Mrs.Parks) is getting killed right after the killer stole the 1993 and 1996 student yearbooks. We -the viewers- get 3 clues of the killer that she has the capitals P.C. from her desk, she commits her murders barefoot and she carefully leaves no evidence making the murders seem like suicides. After the semester starts, one of the male teachers of the school entrusts a class of girls with a task to hush up the rumours about the suicide among the students of the whole school. For this purpose, every week the committee of teachers choose "the clerk for the week" out of students of the same class. Meantime, there is a very strict racism storming in the air among the teachers for the student children of the Shaman families. A girl from the chosen class, whose mother is a Shaman priestess, begins getting affected while she used to call spirits to reveal the exam scores before they're announced or reveal whoever is virgin or not among her friends. That way, her friends always show respect to her, frightening of her but loving her at the same time. Soon, we get more clues about the murderer after she kills the night guard of the school. The murderer is very unpredictable, and the best thing is that each time when the mystery takes control on us trying to solve the murders; the murderer is getting killed. So, technically the spirits which curses the school and those students who are cursed-each time a new student- were the actual offenders. One by one girls of the chosen class lose their minds and in order to kill their victims they must trade their souls in with the spirits, so that the spirits can manipulate them kill their victims.Technical aspects are very low due to the low budget. Even though the audio quality is considerable. To capture the actors' voices more clearly I don't think the film crew had a boom operator though. The tensioned atmosphere is the true accomplishment of the camera movements, some degree of lighting adjustments, camera locations and chosen angles. Storytelling is very ambitious that despite the editing is mediocre, still the film keeps its fluency. Only watch out for the last 20 minutes! It becomes a captivity of total paranoia.While I was staring empty-minded at the closing credits, witnessed on how easy the deepest emotions of a human heart can destroy everything in one's life; I asked myself how in earth can someone make a movie like that so as to reveal what's unseen of the psychopathic murders. What a brave and hard job! What an amazing concept! If only it could have been produced more attractive to the viewer with a better screening quality, a better acting, a better screenplay, a better editing. The total commitment and self-belief of the production crew carries its importance to the highest standards; there we are taught how important the pre-production phase of a raw production material which was based on a very widely known and so told school rumour.If producers who are only looking for gaining box-office receipts with a horror movie and they hesitate to scratch and scrabble the concept of the fear; then they cannot reflect the reality or it just remains unreasonable as a work of imagination. For Yeogo Goedam didn't fall into this trap, it's a must-see cult horror.

ticktock-7 My summary can be found at http://www.docticktock.com. In summary this movie is average at best. This movie takes the average Asian horror film plot and does nothing with it. Whispering Corridors is neither scary, thrilling, or even entertaining. The best part of this movie is its social commentary. Korea has long struggled with student -teacher relationships which are often cold and sometimes even brutally violent and oppressive. W.C. does address this in a very superficial way (ie it just acknowledges that it is happening) and never gets into why or how. But it shouldn't. This is a horror movie, but since they didn't decide to pursue the horror aspect they could have at least developed the naturally interesting thread of the story line.

Rey Alvarez **Some spoilers in this comment**South Korean movie "Whispering Corridors" is a horror movie which is not scary enough. Unlike "Phone" from the same country, the screenwriters of this movie did not succeed in maintaining the terrifying suspense throughout the movie. After the death of the sadistic female teacher and brutal male teacher "Mad Dog" Oh, the movie dragged on and on until its rather disappointing climax. At the climax an average-looking school girl apparition, who was in no way scary, appeared and explained the motivation behind the haunting. Convinced by the sincerity of her former friend Miss Hur, she goes back to the netherworld. This was not even one-tenth as scary as the climax of "Phone" where the apparition of Jin-hee, a murder victim, emerges from a wall and stares at her victim with her horrifyingly angry eyes. Jin-hee was a totally unforgiving monster. She has an uncompromising grudge, which even an average moviegoer can feel from the screen. How can the average-looking female ghost in "Whispering Corridors" measure up to Jin-hee of "Phone?" The only matter of note in this movie was the incredible brutality of the Korean teachers. The teachers slap, punch, whip and sexually harass the students, but the students take it with obedient "Yes, sir." These teachers make some U.S. Marine Corps drill instructors look like cream puffs. If these teachers acted like this in the U.S., they would have been thrown in jail.According to my Korean acquaintance, teachers are allowed to use corporal punishment in South Korea. He also told me that the root cause of the brutality of Korean schoolteachers is the generations-old Confucian ideology. Followers of Confucian ideology believe that teachers can do no wrong and give teachers absolute authority over his or her students. And many modern Koreans pride themselves as being obedient followers of classic Confucianism. Just as the adage "Absolute authority absolutely corrupts." states, the absolute authority given to Korean schoolteachers make many of them to act any way they want. Many resort to intolerable violence while some resort to sexual harassment. (Of course, I strong believe that there are many kind, respectable Korean schoolteachers like Miss Hur in this movie.)In conclusion, "Whispering Corridors" is just an OK movie. It should be obvious to any competent movie fan that "Phone" from the same country is a much better crafted horror movie.

ThrownMuse In the haunting opening sequence, we witness the mysterious death of a teacher at a South Korean all girls school. She is discovered by her pupils (her hanging body is a nightmarish image that will tattoo itself on your memory), and their abusive principal tells them it was a suicide. Before she died, she telephoned her young coworker and told her that "Jin-Ju is here. She's still alive!" Baffled by this, the young teacher embarks on an investigation to figure out what exactly is going on at this school. She finds that the ultra-competitive students are not what they seem on the surface.In its trailer, "Whispering Corridors" is credited as being the film that started the "Asian Horror Explosion." I'm not so sure about that, as Ringu is far better known and appears to have been released first. However, this truly is an excellent supernatural story that deserves as much recognition. While the movie leans heavily on drama and mystery, the frightening scenes are very effective. Those that take place in the long ominous hallways in the empty school at night, as well as in the condemned art studio, are incredibly creepy and atmospheric.The performances by the entire cast, especially the young actresses, are excellent. Throughout the film, we are introduced to several of the repressed but competitive girls. There's the insecure nerdy girl who believes in magic, her best friend who is desperate to be popular and secretly wants to be an artist, the prettiest girl who is also at the top of the class, and the vicious-eyed girl who is second in rank and never utters a word. As the body count increases, the viewer is given several hints as to why each of these girls (as well as the violent and lecherous principal) could be a suspect.The film culminates with a sappy sequence that will likely cause you to eyeroll through it is duration, but it is easy to forgive this melodrama after seeing the chilling final shot of the film. The chronology may be confusing for some (though it is much easier to follow than many Asian supernatural horrors!), but all the sideplots are nicely tied together in the final sequences. What makes "Whispering Corridors" especially interesting is its strong underlying message of solidarity above competition in young women. Not only was I surprised to find social commentary of this type successfully incorporated into a horror movie, but I was doubly astounded to find it in one from South Korea. Yet, the messages here are especially potent because they are universal. I wish this unique horror film could find a larger audience because it deserves to be seen by more people.My Rating: 8/10