Whispering Corridors 1998 Tartan Video   Buy It Now

My high school experience was a little bit frightening.  I don’t need to go into great detail, but let’s just say that I was given the option of buying a variety of handguns each time I used the school’s bathroom and that once I was even offered an Uzi.  Looking back on this, I suppose that $200 bux isn’t such a bad price for a submachine pistol.  Then there is the fact that I found it necessary to sew a pocket inside my trench coat where I could conceal a meat cleaver.  Yeah, a real one.  Funny thing about being goth back them was that people were simultaneously scared of you and wanted to kick your butt on a daily basis.  Funny thing about being goth with a meat cleaver?  Nobody wants anything but to walk away.

But no matter how strange and scary my high school experience was, I had nothing on the crap that Lim Ji-oh and Youn Jae-yi are about to face in their senior year of an all girl’s high school.  While my school hallways were filled with gangsters and dealers, this school is apparently populated by the restless spirits of the dead.  We see this in the first few moments of Whispering Corridors as a teacher is attacked, strangled and drug through the empty, nighttime corridors only to be hung by her neck from a suspended walkway.  Her attacker?  An unseen entity which obviously has some sort of bone to pick with either this teacher or the school at large.

When Jae-yi ad Ji-oh arrive to school the following morning, they discover the apparent “suicide” of their teacher, which is immediately ordered to be kept silent by their fanatic headmaster.  The event brings the two together in a friendship that might otherwise have never happened.  Jae-yi is a bit of an outcast in the school…not very popular, not very self-confident, but nice in the way that only ostracized kids know how to be.  Ji-oh on the other hand is a bit of a misfit herself, but for the opposite reasons.  She is very loud, brash and confident, to the point where she can’t help but draw attention to herself…both good and bad. 

Together the two students compliment each other exceptionally: Jae-yi finding a bit of excitement and the ability to feel like she fits in with Ji-oh and the wilder girl finding an unbiased acceptance with no preconceived judgments from Jae-yi.  As a pair, they find themselves growing stronger in each other, but this growing strength draws the eyes of their schoolteachers and the staff.  And the attentions of this staff, especially the perverted, touchy-feely headmaster, are not something that these girls want or need.

But combined with the drama unfolding around them in the school hierarchy, there are even more troubles brewing.  It seems that the restless spirit inside the school is not finished with its work after only the one teacher’s murder.  Soon the halls are abuzz with the gossip of a former student who still occupies the school and is exacting revenge for some past injustice done to her.  But the more the rumors fly, the more signs point to the fact that a flesh and blood girl may be in on the mayhem, if not also the death of the teacher.

Soon the arrival of new teacher, Eun-young, heralds a break in the mystery.  It seems that she was a student in this same school once and may have known the girl who is rumored to haunt the halls.  More importantly, she may know the tragedy that led to the girl’s continued haunting of the school.  Seeing quite a bit of herself in her two students Jae-yi and Ji-oh, the new teacher begins to grow close to them, an act which casts her in a negative light amongst the staff of the school and brings into question her role in all that is happening in the school; especially when the girls begin acting strangely towards the incident of the teachers death and take on a near fascination with the event.

What follows is a mystery that moves between the worlds of madness, social structures, the hardships of youth and schooling, spiritual unrest and the abuse of students at the hands of their peers and teachers.  What you won’t find here are any of the assumed pervy “schoolgirl” moments that would have ruined this film quickly.  In fact, I am surprised to see such detailed female roles in a genre and part of the world that is not known for its reverence of the female character.  These girls are rounded and complete characters which drive this plot and story to further success than had they been two dimensional or shallow portrayals.

The story follows some seriously eerie paths without ever fully breaking the barrier of “terrifying”.  The camerawork is amazing, as are the performances (two very gifted actresses play the two main students to perfection), but the script itself moved a little bit too paced and plotted to give a real sense of terror and the unknown.  We definitely have more of a supernatural mystery going on here then we do a full-fledged horror film, but that could be said of most Asian cinema, which tends to be a little more cerebral than what we here in the States are used to. 

For the feel of Whispering Corridors, you need look no further than Dario Argento’s works such as Suspiria and Opera with a bit of The Lady In White thrown in for good measure.  There is misdirection aplenty, some decent twists tossed in, and a surprisingly satisfying ending to what could have been a complete mess as it unraveled.  The gore quotient is minimal, but there is some brutal violence as the “unknown entity” exacts its revenge.  Again, we are much more ghost story than slasher flick here, so horror buffs best be prepared.

Whispering Corridors has the distinction of being amongst the first entries into the Asian horror wave that is still crashing against our shores, but it lacks some of the polish that a few of its companions possess.  This isn’t necessary a bad thing, as I usually prefer a little nitty gritty to unbelievably perfect, but some of the rough around the edges (especially in the effects) stuff here shows its age a tad more than one would think.  The highly superior sequel, released here in the States as Memento Mori, evidences this fact.

Overall, Whispering Corridors is a fantastic piece of cinema that has been circling around the bootleg DVD and foreign region markets for quite some time, and which I am very glad has finally made it to a home theater screen near me.  While not quite the launching pad for its director as I am sure he would have liked, it certainly helped at as launching point for many of the famous Japanese and other Asian horror titles which we are now able to enjoy here across the ocean.

Any fans of foreign horror or supernatural mysteries will find much here to enjoy.  I myself enjoyed simply the performances of a cast which I was not familiar with and which did a terrific job.  If Tartan keeps releasing these treasures from a few years back, you can put money on the fact that I will be around for each and every one of them.  Speaking of which, I have to get going on watching another Tartan release, Koma, so you go pick this one up and we will meet back here to discuss the other film in a few!

-aaron-