A sickly girl Ju-ran transfers to a new sanitorium boarding school to regain health. But she discovers that students are disappearing and notices abnormal changes happening to her body. She suspects the school for what's happening and tries to discover what secret is hidden.
Production
1930s colonial aesthetics hide something far more sinister.
Acting
Park Bo-young's physical transformation is genuinely disturbing.
Direction
Lee Hae-young builds dread through what you almost see.
Director
Lee Hae-young
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Japanese names forced on Korean students mirror real colonial erasure practices; the horror literalizes historical violence against Korean bodies.
The film was criticized for obscuring its anti-colonial message with genre excess, but that tension between exploitation cinema and political allegory is exactly what makes it fascinatingly uncomfortable.
KR
