Do you ever find yourself wondering what would happen if ghosts were real? What would they be like? Sometimes, when I have nothing better to do, my brain comes up with things like this. Which scenario is more likely to happen, Kairo or Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum? When I asked myself that question, I immediately thought Kairo seemed more plausible. I'm not even sure why I feel that way. I think it's because everything that happens in Gonjiam just seems too terrifying to ever really happen.
In Kairo, through the internet, ghosts begin to invade our world. People experience overwhelming despair and loneliness and are eventually spirited away. I never fully understood Kairo's explanation of how ghosts managed to enter our world through the internet, but it didn't matter because the emotions it brought on were so strong. I understand the concept of being spirited away, I've seen it in other media (for example, Fatal Frame 3). I could be completely wrong, but Kairo almost makes it seem as if the people who are spirited away are in such despair and feel so alone that they simply cease to exist. All that's left behind is a black shadow.
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is about a group of people who go explore, you guessed it, a haunted asylum while broadcasting the entire thing online. Although some of the scares are set up by the production crew, it soon becomes clear that they're not responsible for a lot of the creepy things that are happening.
If ghosts exist, even though they're downright evil in Gonjiam, at least they're isolated to one location. If you want to avoid them, you just never go to the asylum and you'll be safe (you can't now anyway because Gonjiam was actually torn down around the time of the movie's release). Whereas in Kairo, they're invading our world, you aren't safe anywhere. Maybe it's because I grew up on the internet and I remember how it used to be, but to me, of the two of these movies, Kairo does seem like the one that's more believable. If for no other reason than, if you take the ghosts out of the equation, it still seems like something that could happen. Maybe the ghosts are symbolic. Maybe I'm making no sense.
These are the only two ghost movies to actually scare me, but they did it in two completely different ways. Gonjiam is pure horror, it's tense and you never feel safe while you're watching it because the film does such a good job of attacking when you least expect it. You know it's coming, but it doesn't happen at the moment you think it will. Kairo, on the other hand, conveys a feeling of loneliness unlike anything I've ever experienced before. It was made at a time when the internet was fairly new, dialup still existed. This movie feeds into the kind of loneliness that I think a lot of people who spent a fair amount of time online back then felt.
At the end of the day, these are both really great horror films that are shining examples of how to do a ghost movie the right way. And I wouldn't want to experience either of them for myself. If ghosts are real, I hope they're more like the Casper variety.
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