Whispering Corridors poster & wallpaper

Gyu-ri Kim, Kang-Hie Choi, Mi-yeon Lee

This groundbreaking Korean film stars Kang-hie Choi as Se-yeon Choi, an intrepid teacher at an all-girls school whose prying ways are awarded with a murder-mystery she now must unravel. After a handfu...( read more  read more... )l of students begin to turn up dead, administrators scramble to cover up the deaths and pass them off as suicides, a betrayal that spurs Se-yeon to action. But, like the proverbial cat, the curious educator may be marked for death.

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53% liked it

2,639 ratings

Unrated, 105 min.

Directed by: Ki-Hyung Park

Release Date: February 22, 2005

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DVD Release Date: February 22, 2005

Stats: 120 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (120)

  • ceWEBrity
    January 25, 2007
    ceWEBrity
    The movie is a strongly-plotted, suspenseful and intelligent mystery with a good thematic plot and a handful of intense scenes. It's slow, granted, but almost everything that comes out of Asia is. Good performances, a twist ending and some pretty rough abuse scenes make the movie...( read more) stand out from the crowd.
  • alanjayh
    June 1, 2008
    alanjayh
    effective storytelling..decent acting..this movie holds your interest and keeps you thinking..I enjoyed
  • threefolddado
    May 17, 2008
    threefolddado
    Some people love this. I thought it was a little slow. The "twist" was also a bit obvious.
  • Hellshocked
    September 25, 2007
    Hellshocked
    The weaker (and first) entry in the Whispering Corridors "series" is a very intelligent and sensitive film in its own right. The problem is that, for whatever reason, I never felt particularly engaged by it. Unlike in "Wishing Stairs" and (especially) "Memento Mori" the characte...( read more)rs never truly called to me. I watched the film unfold but was never exactly in the middle, and believe me I gave it many chances.

    At its core, the film is an exposé of the appalling ammount of physical and verbal violence inflicted upon students by their teachers in the South Korea educational system. With pressures to get into college and be "successful" while maintaining a docile, hardworking demeanor coming from everywhere, it is not uncommon for a student to commit suicide. It is very telling that the film goes out of its way to show the teachers as the bullies. There is conflict among the girls, arguments and even the occasional tussle, but they are all equally appalled and empathic when a teacher beats one of his students, be she the most or least popular in the school.

    The ending manages to generate the pathos that (to me) had been sorely lacking for the first hour and 20 minutes. Once we find out exactly what is going on, and why, it is as heartbreaking as anything in the other two entries. The final shot, a typical double-twist ending, oddly enough does not feel out of place. It was certainly not attached with the idea of a sequel in mind and is very much in tune with the themes the film has raised. I may not have missed it if it had been cut, but it makes perfect sense and does not feel cheap or out of place.

    The direction is rather flat a lot of the time. The photography is grainy and the film is not particularly well lit. The editing, on the other hand, is fantastic. There are sequences, large and small, that are given life sheerly by the way they are cut. One of the creepier sequences involves a series of jump-cuts of a person approaching another. The whole thing takes 2 seconds, the camera never moves, and the effect is jarring, almost like stop-motion. I also quite liked the way the discovery of the opening suicide was cut. The performances are, for the most part, quite good. Even the teachers, though their behavior may be over the top at times, never absolutely chew up the scenery.

    I will watch this one again, to see if I am more involved from frame-one this time. Even if my opinion remains the same, however, this is still a good, intelligent film very much worth watching. That this is the weaker "Whispering Corridors" film (despite being the first) is akin to saying "Return of the Jedi" is the weakest of the Holy Trilogy. It is only weaker by comparison.
  • stilettokillerz
    November 4, 2009
    stilettokillerz
    Not really scary but I like the story and the cinematography.
  • ellelag75
    August 23, 2009
    ellelag75
    another to disappoint?
  • doctorburglary
    August 7, 2009
    doctorburglary
    this is a south korean all-girl high school ghost story atmospheric horror.. it contains most of the entertaining elements a high school flick should contain like bitching between the students, competition, friendships, disappointments, boring classes, teachers that are mostly id...( read more)iots except one that is actually a good one.. but she was going to the same high school and she has some issues from her past haunting her at the same time as the first murder of a teacher happens.. reading the description of the film i knew i shouldnt rely on its low score on stupid "rotten tomatoes", and i was right, this is, besides providing me with all these high school motives that a nerd like me should enjoy, no doubt a skilfully made flick.. you might say its a all too typical asian ghost horror but it was done in the same year as ringu and back then all those topics werent that exploited, so it has its freshness.. its also a very subtle horror, its faithful to the genre in a way it contextualizes the topic, with the archetypes it uses and in the way it makes its intense chilling (and yet very sad) atmosphere but this is not a shock-me-baby-all-the-time kind of horror approach, even tho i found the scene near the end, with the teacher being chased by a ghost in a dark corridor with windows glass breaking pretty intense, because "all that endless talking", that most critics of the film bash actually made me connect to the characters in a way a lot of this kind of films dont.. not to say that their life stories are very original and that i couldnt kind of guess the identity of the ghost pretty early on but this film doesnt need to keep you "puzzled"for you to be able to enjoy it.. lots of these girls stories are interconnected in a way that makes a strong narrative backbone for the film.. but like i said, this film focuses mostly on the atmosphere, you get this familiar feeling of your high school life being some kind of a void between primary school innocence and college, where disappointements, guilty conscience, uneasiness in the education system seems pronounced and frustrating than in other periods of "education".. it seems a point of preparing yourself for some very important decisions in your life that somehow seemed to go more smoothly in the earlier years.. not to say that primary school isnt "hell", even more than high school, or college and so on, but not in quite the same way..
    this film also deals specifically with south korean education system but thats more important for you people that know how that is since i was never a south korean high school girl (probably).. anyway, i was never bored while watching this film, and i guess most of you that appreciate films like ringu,kairo,dark water etc. already watched this film, if not, you should.. even tho it might be not quite as influential as the previously mentioned films, its surely is a good piece of horror cinema and it did spawn quite a number of asian horror flicks dealing with the same issues and aesthetic..
  • FilmEstAmour
    June 3, 2009
    FilmEstAmour
    This actually sounds really, really good.
  • capricornelm
    September 22, 2008
    capricornelm
    Whispering Corridors (1998) aka Yeogo goedam is a korean Horror Movie. While investigating the school files, the frightened teacher Mrs. Park startles and calls the young teacher Eun-young Hur, telling her that the deceased Jin-ju Jang is back, a dark secret about the past of her...( read more) friend and Mrs. Park shows itself..
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    "Whispering Corridors" isn't really a horror movie but a ghost tale set in a girl's school.. it prefers to creep you out, rather than freak you out..eerie and slow to begin with which I find it very difficult to distinguish and follow the story...movie itself plays on many different levels and has a lot to say such as responsibility of power and friendship....

    Overall....it is a rare type of ghost story that plays well....Definitely a must-see.
  • danieljparsons
    September 14, 2008
    danieljparsons
    Whispering Corridors, the first of a series of ghost stories set in all-girl schools from Korea, is aptly enough, a haunting film that builds on atmosphere and emotion rather than any actual scares. Character driven and featuring excellent performances from the majority of...( read more) the players, the potential from the tense prologue, which features some brilliant camera framing and sound editing, is mostly delivered throughout the remaining running time. Whilst the middle section gets bogged down with too many characters and mini sub-plots that don't conclude satisfactorily, the main storyline is gripping and emotive, and the themes of friendship, isolation, trying to fit in and the general pressures of high-school are just as resonant as say, the early days of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. There's a lot of exposition in the final act of the film, which thankfully doesn't get too confusing, and the ending is, refreshingly, heartfelt and moving, with an actually quite effective twist. The film also becomes clearer and benefits greatly from repeat viewings.

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  • littlevixenis
    April 20, 2007
    littlevixenis
    I watched this movies a few years back but i remember it well. i thought it was great. i must agree that its better than the crap americans make (no offence). Asians have a great way with horrors. eg. ring, grudge etc. much better than the american versions. plus i just loved the fact that this movie gave me chills. it was awesome.
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