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Salmokji: The Whispering Water (2026)

Something very interesting is going on at the box office currently with young people returning to cinemas. The US horror films Backrooms and Obsession directed by filmmakers in their 20s (Kane Parsons and Curry Barker) have both crossed $200m globally. With their low budgets (Obsession cost less than $1m to produce; Backrooms was budgeted at $10m) they have further aided in the recovery of the box office in North America having struggled to hit pre-Covid levels following a change in viewing habits and the strikes that brought the industry to a grounding halt. There was a prevailing concern that young people were not seeking the big screen experience having grown up watching content on their phones. Yet made by Youtubers it appears that the platform has had an intriguing effect on the success of these two films.

In Korea, Backrooms has too proved popular selling over 800,000 tickets. This comes a few weeks after Salmokji: The Whispering Water (2026) accrued over 3.2 million tickets at the box office generating interest in the film's location: a reservoir. Young people are central here. According to CGV's (Korea's leading exhibitor) website 48 percent of those who booked a ticket were in their teens or in their 20s. For Backrooms it is over 50 percent.

Horror as a genre has its origins in early cinema with German Expressionism in the 1920s and has remained an integral genre in the history of the motion picture. Take for instance the seminal feature Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock and similarly in Korea the genre has taken various turns over the years. An early example is Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960) that is arguably one of the most influential Korean films of all time. Interestingly it was released the same year as Psycho.

Korean horror also played a role in attracting young people in the 1990s and the 2000s with the Whispering Corridors films sparking interest in horror films that were often released during the oppressively hot summer months. A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) was released in June 2003 selling over 3 million tickets.

In the 2010s the trend became less palpable but there were some hits. A notable one was the found footage supernatural title GONJIAM: The Haunted Asylum (2018) that attracted over 2.6m viewers in the Spring of 2018. Even more significant was Train to Busan (2016), an action horror that sold 11.5 million tickets locally and was a hit across Asia, not least in Hong Kong where it became the highest grossing Asian film.

K-Zombies (#Alive, Peninsula, Colony)

Looking at the industry over the last few years horror has returned to the forefront of the industry as it seeks to reconnect with audiences. While all genres have their own appeal, watching horror films in a crowd evidently remains a lure as we are seeing this in Korea.

One of the first hits during the pandemic was Cho Il-hyung's post-apocalyptic horror film #Alive (2020) starring Yoo Ah-in as a gamer who is forced into a struggle of survival following a zombie outbreak. It surpassed a million admissions within a week at the box office. There was also a life for the film on Netflix after the streamer acquired the title.

A month later, Yeon Sang-ho's action-horror film Peninsula (2020) managed to sell 3.8m tickets despite the fact it was released during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic though some saw the film as a disappointment given the heights Train to Busan hit in 2016. Peninsula is a standalone sequel.

Colony (2026)

Yeon's most recent film Colony (2026) that also features zombies has struck a chord and sold 4.7m tickets to date in Korea. Featuring a confined space — a building that becomes the epicenter of the outbreak — there are echoes to Train to Busan. The film is reaching a wide demographic but those in their 20s account for 30 percent of the audiences, the highest demographic, according to CGV.

The Occult (Exhuma)

Exhuma (2024)

Similarly popular among audiences of different ages was Jang Jae-hyun's mystery horror film Exhuma (2024) about a pair of shamans along with an undertaker and feng shui master who investigate a curse. Local audiences had already demonstrated an appetite for the occult through titles like The Wailing (2016) but in the 2020s it's further grown in prominence illustrated by the success of Exhuma and also Dark Nuns (2025) that was one of the few films to break even in 2025.

Horror and the occult are a potent combination in Korean cinema often featuring intense sequences as shamans attempt to communicate with the dead. Religion continues to play a prominent role in Korean society; be it through Christianity, Buddhism or shamanism and this is frequently reflected on screen to terrific cinematic effect.

Confined Spaces (Noise) and Open Spaces (Salmokji)

Korean horror films in the 1990s and 2000s were set in locations such as schools that audiences were familiar with. Horror as a genre has often relied on interior locations; confined spaces in which jump scares have been effective at unnerving audiences. It also keeps the budgets relatively low making them an attractive prospect for local producers.

Noise (2025)

Kim Soo-jin's Noise (2025) takes place in an apartment complex that dominate Korea's urban landscapes. The film centers on two sisters played by Lee Sun-bin and Han Su-a who reside in an apartment that they have purchased. When one of the siblings disappears, it appears connected to noises that emanate from this building unsettling residents.

The film brings together genre thrills and social critique — now a trademark of Korean cinema — as noise complaints in apartments have become a social issue. It was compared to the Netflix thriller Wall to Wall (2025) that dropped on the platform last summer. Both dealt with the subject of noise in apartments.

Salmokji: The Whispering Water directed by Lee Sang-min who is 30 years old is a bit different because it's largely set out in the open and yet still relies on its location to provide the film's scariest moments. A film crew are sent to a reservoir to capture some footage of the surrounding roads and landscape but led by a producer (Kim Hye-yoon) they discover some ominous figures are lurking.

Screened to the local press in Screen X ahead of its release the film utilizes the premium large format to further add to the film's atmospheric chills but ultimately it was the conventional big screen experience where it was a hit accounting for 96.9% of admissions. Its success has demonstrated that younger generations haven't shunned cinemas after all.

Written by Jason Bechervaise
Edited by kofic