Carrie goes Korean in Whispering Corridors, a thoughtful horror item that succeeds more as a commentary on regimented life than as a stylish bit of bloodletting.
This Korean ghost story involves a troubled school where the teachers ritually abuse the female students with full-throttle thwacks on the head and slaps on the face. But the adults mete out punishment at their own peril, since one special youngster died in a freak accident a decade earlier, and now she in coming back every three years or so in the form of a new girl ready to wreak havoc on her tormentors and to protect her friends. Beneath the gruesomely Gothic exterior - the walls actually drip blood by the end - is a harsh critique of Korea's militaristic education system, a theme that accounts for the
film's local popularity.
On the plus side, there are solid, if somewhat monotone, performances from Lee Mi-yeon, as a student-turned-teacher, now literally haunted by her dead best friend and Kim Kyu-ri, a shaman's daughter who somehow threatens the ghost's equilibrium. This odd three-way relationship centres on paintings, drawings and sculptures made by the participants, when they're not busy hanging themselves or getting eviscerated in study hall.
Ken Eisner