If Ghosts Are Real - Kairo vs. Gonjiam

 

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.

Slow Burn vs. Action Horror

This post will seem like a direct comparison between Hereditary and Truth or Dare, but I swear it isn't meant to be. The comparison here is between horror that starts out very slow, with a lot of buildup and horror that is almost nonstop action, which works better (for me) and why. I also want to talk a bit about Truth or Dare without giving it its own post, because it doesn't deserve one. I would love to talk about Hereditary as well, but there is no possible way for me to talk about that film without giving away major spoilers and for that movie, you really need to experience it for yourself.

Let's start with Hereditary. This movie...There's so much I want to say, but I can't. The only things I can really say, that are still sort of SPOILER-ISH are that I was amazed when I went back and rewatched the movie, that there were so many hints that tell you exactly what is going on. If you go back and watch even the first 30 minutes again, you'll wonder how you ever missed that ending. The other slight spoiler I want to mention is that the ending really reminded me of the original Suspiria, but I wasn't mad about it. Suspiria is a movie that I love, up until the point where you find out what's really going on. I didn't feel like it worked in that film. In Hereditary, however, it was so perfect.

The only reason I watched Truth or Dare is because an episode of Running Man was inspired by it. It's very Final Destination-esque. A group of friends repeatedly have to escape death (by choosing truth or dare and completing their mission), in the order in which they played the game the first round. So here come the SPOILERS because this isn't really a movie I mind ruining for anyone. The ending isn't particularly clever or innovative (I could swear I've read stories with similar endings on r/nosleep), but I didn't hate it. Throughout the entire movie, Olivia and Markie talk about how they'll always choose each other above everyone and everything else, with the exception of Olivia's first truth (before the game went off the rails), which was would she choose to save her group of friends or the entire population of Mexico during an alien attack? She chose the population of Mexico, because her character is supposed to be "too nice" and that's the correct choice to make, right? Saving many over a few. However, at the end of the movie, Olivia once again tells Markie she chooses her, takes out her phone and records a video detailing the ordeal they've just been through, uploads it to Youtube and asks her viewers, "Truth or dare?" Because at this point, the girls have exhausted all their options and the only way to save each other is to get more people into the rotation so it takes longer for their turns to come around again. I guess Olivia is no longer saving the population of Mexico.

Now that we've talked a bit about both films, here's how I felt about each of them. I thought Hereditary was very slow, but had a satisfying conclusion. I kept checking my phone throughout the movie because not much happened, until the last 20 minutes or so. I was very creeped out and disturbed by the movie's conclusion and it's something that stayed with me for days after watching it. Truth or Dare had a lot of action and it did hold my attention, but it was a pretty ridiculous movie overall, it never actually scared me and it's something I'll never think about again once I'm done writing this post.

So which is better? There honestly isn't a definitive answer because it depends entirely on if it's done right. It Comes at Night and The Blair Witch Project are both examples of films that, in my opinion, had a lot of buildup with very unsatisfying endings. Hereditary worked so well because you can clearly see, once everything is revealed, that the film was always headed towards that conclusion. And once it reached it, it was horrifying. It was worth every second I sat there thinking, "I hope this is going somewhere amazing and I didn't waste my time watching it." Because that's usually what ends up happening for me with these types of movies. They're slow and the ending never makes up for it.

The same goes for more action oriented horror films. If you want to get into a really specific sub-genre, action oriented horror films about a group of college friends going on vacation together, who end up playing truth or dare and screwing over the entire world. Let's talk about Cabin in the Woods, a beautiful loveletter to the horror genre. It is extremely heavy on the action for a good portion of the film and it never lets up. It completely goes off the deep end later on in the movie, in the best possible way. It's a thoroughly enjoyable horror film and it worked very well. These types of movies can be extremely clever when done correctly.

As usual, I don't have an answer to the question posed. Everything is on a case by case basis, you can't judge one movie based on another. They're all unique, some work and more often than not, some don't, but it's extremely satisfying when you find one that hits all the right marks and manages to surprise you.

What Is Horror?

Spoiler alert: You won’t find out by reading this post. If you were expecting an actual answer, John, you’re going to be very disappointed. I’m sorry. This is the best I could come up with because the more I thought about it, the more I realized there’s almost no logic behind my thought process.

My boyfriend has asked, on several occasions, what defines something as “horror.” I think it started when we watched the first season of Westworld together. All hell broke loose and he asked, “Is it horror yet?” No, it’s still sci-fi. He then asked why, and I guess “It just isn’t” wasn’t a satisfying response because this continued with Ex Machina and Sunshine (more on that later) and my answer, of course, was still no. These are not horror films. At one point, he asked me if Prey is considered a horror game and I was at a loss, partially because I haven’t completed the game and I need to experience the story and the overall mood/tone in its entirety before I can come to a conclusion, and also because based on my first impressions, I think it equally qualifies as sci-fi and horror. After he’d asked me enough times about this subject, I even started asking myself, okay, what makes something “horror” then?

Until John started questioning me about it, I never really thought about what makes something a horror film/game/show. Is it the overall tone? It can’t be dependent on whether or not it manages to scare me because there are so many movies that I consider horror films and they didn’t even make me flinch. John brought up this “What is a chair?” exercise that perfectly relates to the problem I started having when I initially wanted to describe what I think a movie needs to include in order to be a horror film. I began describing it to myself while working on this post and I realized, “Oh wait, but it also includes this, and not every movie has that,” and it became one huge contradiction. Because not every scary movie, regardless of what Scream will have you believe, follows the same formula.

There are sub genres of horror. It’s not a one size fits all thing. There’s psychological horror, slasher films, sci-fi horror, comedic horror, Lovecraftian horror, supernatural horror, fantasy horror, God awful torture porn. There’s Cabin in the Woods, which is the most beautiful love letter to the horror genre I’ve ever seen. There are movies I consider fringe horror, like the first film in The Purge franchise. It’s more suspense than horror, but I would throw it in the horror category anyway.

There are films that can fit into several genres, but they lean slightly more in one direction than the other. I would classify Alien as a sci-fi horror film, with emphasis on sci-fi, but Event Horizon as a horror sci-fi film, emphasis on horror (and Dead Space as a horror sci-fi game since it’s pretty much Event Horizon). And then there’s John Carpenter’s The Thing, which is just straight up horror even though it does have an element of science fiction to it. I think the reason Alien leans more sci-fi than horror is because...It’s about an alien, whereas Event Horizon leans more horror for me because EVERYTHING happens. Everything. Seriously, watch Event Horizon. It’s the only good movie Paul W. S. Anderson has ever made. Maybe one day Uwe Boll will surprise us, too. Probably not though. Anyway, back to the point. What’s “interesting” is that I say Alien (the movie) leans more sci-fi than it does horror, but Alien Isolation is one of the scariest games I have ever played and I absolutely 100% consider that a survival horror game. I couldn’t even explain or defend my reasoning for this if pressed to, John, so don’t ask.

I can’t categorize Jurassic Park, even though it can technically fit into horror or sci-fi, I have a hard time saying it’s either. I know a lot of people consider Jaws a horror film, but I think I just put Jaws into the “shark movie” category, as if that’s a genre in itself. When it comes to dinosaurs, sharks, oversized bugs and mammals, those all lean way more sci-fi than horror to me, no matter what the story is, Cujo being the exception, but even that is something I don’t consider horror. They’re “animal films.” Not to be confused with “family friendly animal films” like Homeward Bound.

As a counterpoint to John’s questioning about whether or not something becomes part of the horror genre based on a brief moment where something frightening happens, I’d like to offer this example. No one would ever call Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune a horror game, but surprisingly it has a really scary section you have to play through later on in the game, and this is the best case I can think of that explains my feelings on this subject. Just because something has horror elements, that doesn’t make it horror.

Last night, we watched Sunshine, a movie that deserves its own post (but isn’t getting one because I refuse to waste any more of my time on it) for being a spliced together trainwreck of what seems like two totally different movies and once again, he asked me, “Is this horror?” This movie is the one that should be impossible for me to categorize because even the movie itself doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, however, I think it helped me figure out, at least somewhat, how I determine whether something is sci-fi or horror. For me personally, if a movie spends a significant amount of time developing a plot around a science fiction story, at the very least, it’s sci-fi horror, if not just completely sci-fi. If it has a slight sci-fi subplot happening in the background, with mostly a horror overtone, it’s a horror film. When I was watching Sunshine with John, I told him, “This is just regular space stuff. This is what happens when you’re dumb enough to go into space.” The first hour and twenty minutes of that movie could have been Armageddon or any other “We have to go to space to save the planet” movie ever made, so even though it turned into a really bizarre slasher/supernatural horror film at the end...It’s still just regular space stuff to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That’s the best explanation I can come up with. Thanks to my boyfriend for making me sit through that mess (I had such high hopes for it, I was expecting necromorphs) and helping me reach some sort of conclusion about how my mind works.