DIRECTOR Yang Byoung-khan

CAST GU Yun-hee, Yang Byoung-khan

RELEASE DATE July 30, 2015

CONTACT Mirovision

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Email jason@mirovision.com

 

Movies come in all shapes and sizes but are seldom quite as small as Scary House (2005), a no-budget horror-comedy from director YANG Byoung-khan, starring GU Yun-hee. Beyond directing, YANG also performed writing, production, photography, editing, and sound duties. He even co-stars in the film. In fact, beyond his lead actress, he was the only other person on set.

A photographer couple moves into a four-story building, taking the top floor as their apartment and installing a studio in the basement. The husband (YANG Byoung-khan) goes off on a business trip, leaving the wife (GU Yun-hee) to her own devices. She goes to the studio, which is filled with mannequins and is shocked to discover that one of the mannequins is now a ghost. Terrified, she runs back up to the apartment.

Disbelieving what she has just experienced, the woman returns to the studio, only the find the ghost again. She hides at home once more and again meets the ghost, now out on the balcony. Following all of this ghostly activity, the woman gets down to the business of feeding herself and going about her chores. She busies herself all day until it’s time to go to sleep. Once in bed, the ghostly apparitions return to haunt her.

Released in the summer of 2015, Scary House became an unlikely sensation, as the viewers who took a chance on this film, which was hardly booked in any theaters and benefited from precious little marketing, were charmed by its simplicity, earnestness and, it must be said, baffling creative choices.

Scary House (2005) has been warmly embraced as a cult film, likened in some quarters as a Korean equivalent of the infamous American film The Room. However, there is some debate as to the artistic intentions of the film - is it a poorly made horror film, or is it a knowing comedy?

Regardless of the answer to that question, Scary House (2005) has delighted viewers the way few Korean films have, like a crowd-pleasing B-movie to laugh along with. Given the exceptionally drawn-out nature of its staging - chores take place in real-time, such as when the woman makes kimchi and we bear witness to every step of the process - YANG’s film is best tackled as a group activity. Watched alone, the long-take chores or the real-time traveling across four stories worth of stairs might themselves be a chore, but with fellow viewers, these drawn-out moments become eccentricities to marvel over.

GU, who was plucked by YANG from the stage, delivers a kooky and strangely hypnotic lead performance, in which she dances and sings off-key, screams quietly at ghosts, and constantly mutters to herself. 

Director YANG was briefly active in the film industry in the 1980s, debuting as a filmmaker with An Ark Shell Lands on Earth in 1985. Before Scary House (2005), his last credit was in 1994. Although his eventual return to the director’s chair may have been a small one, it was certainly worthwhile, earning him, in addition to his newfound status as a cult filmmaker, a Special Prize at the 3rd Wildflower Film Awards Korea. However, the film only screened at one event overseas, the Paris Korean Film Festival.