Film / Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is a Korean Found Footage Horror Movie by Jung Bum-Shik.

Ha-Joon (Wi Ha-Joon) is the host of an online Ghost Hunters-style show called "Horror Times", aided by his crew Sung-Hoon (Sung-Hoon Park), Seung-Wook (Seung-Wook Lee), and Je-Yoon (Jay Yoo), he plans to do a livestream in one of the most haunted buildings in the world: Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital. Bringing along three women, Charlotte Moon (Ye-Won Mun), Ji-Hyun (Ji-Hyung Park), and Ah-Yeon (Ah-Yeon Oh) to assist them, the plan is to check out the building's paranormal hotspots (the Director's Office, the Group Therapy Room, and last of all, the infamous Room 402), and hopefully pull in one million viewers.

The group sets up their base camp, where Ha-Joon hunkers down to capture everything, the group enter the building on midnight of the anniversary of its closing and begin their mission. Shame their mission is more dangerous than anticipated.

The movie was released on March 28th, 2018.

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Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum contains examples of:

• Artistic License – History: The real-life Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital was built in 1982, long after when its movie counterpart supposedly closed down. It also closed not because the director went mad, but largely because complying with a certain environmental law would have greatly strained the hospital's finances.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Anyone possessed by the ghosts at Gonjiam have their eyes turn completely pitch black.
• Blatant Lies: To goad the crew into continuing the stream, Ha-Joon denies the supernatural change in graffiti below Charlotte's.
• Blood from the Mouth: The mouth of the ghost that floats up behind Ha-Joon in Room 402 has blood around her mouth.
• Book Smart: Je-Yoon teases Ah-Yeon as this.
• Call-Back:
  • Ye-Joon ties a panty to a tree as a marker. In true Blair Witch Project fashion, Charlotte and Ji-Hyun find themselves running in circles around that panty.
  • Not much later, we see lab equipment (and the dead chicken) scattered on the forest.
  • The doll in the same lab reappears in Room 402, heralding the arrival of its owner.
  • Charlotte's holy water shows up only twice - once as a demonstration, and the other shows it seemingly boiling away or being poured with rainwater.
• Camera Abuse: After Ha-Joon is attacked by a ghost in Room 402, we the P.O.V. of the drone as it falls to the ground, breaking the lens on impact.
• Cat Scare: When Je-Yoon enters the bathing room, he sees what looks like the top of someone's head in the tub and freaks out. Ah-Yeon reaches in and pulls it out, revealing it's a wig on something white.
• Cutting the Knot: Attempted a few times over the film. A number of people who have come to Gonjiam have tried to open the door to Room 402, usually by trying to break the lock (since none of them have the key). The crew try as well with a circular saw, but they can't open it either.
• Downer Ending: All of the cast are possessed/taken by the ghosts of Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital. Also, the livestream cut out when Sung-Hoon admitted to staging all the hauntings to Je-Yoon an Ah-Yeon, so everyone leaves the livestream disappointed, not knowing what happened after.
• Eldritch Location:
  • At one point, Sung-Hoon, Je-Yoon, and Ah-Yeon find themselves in a room full of ankle-deep water with no visible exit, and what looks like the surface of water in the hole in the ceiling above them. It's in this room that they're possessed by ghosts one-by-one.
  • Time is also a mess inside the asylum, with Charlotte's death occurring much later from the P.O.V. of the surviving crew and Ha-Joon seeing himself get killed by the director.
• Flipping the Bird: Ji-Hyun straps one of the cameras to her middle finger. When she does it at the start of the movie, she states it's for a "fuck-you-mentary".
• Foreseeing My Death: It's partly obscured by the window, but footage from Ha-Joon's drone shows someone violently jerking inside it. It isn't until later when Ha-Joon looks from the same window that we realize he IS the one jerking, and that's because the director is hanging him.
• Found Footage: This movie chronicles a group of people who disappear inside of Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital.
• Four Is Death: Gonjiam is the fourth leg in Charlotte's trip to CNN's 7 freakiest places.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: While reviewing the footage, Ha-Joon sees a split-second shot from the P.O.V. of a seventh filmer. There are only six crew members inside the hospital at that time.
• Full-Frontal Assault: How Charlotte meets her end inside Room 402.
• The Gadfly: Ah-Yeon really enjoys making fun of Je-Yoon being a scaredy cat.
• Going in Circles: Ji-Hyun and Charlotte run into the same tree marker twice as they attempt to head back to their ten.
• Good-Times Montage: Three.
  • First with the crew enjoying time at a bar the night before heading to Gonjiam.
  • Second when they decide to go swimming by launching each other off of a giant floating balloon.
  • Third when they're eating noodles in the home base tent before they head into Gonjiam.
• Haunted Technology: The ghosts may or may not have fudged with the stream numbers. The ghosts in the background of the webpage also walk away from the screen at the end of the movie.
• Hell Is That Noise:
  • The ping-pong ball sound is described in the legends as a harbinger of a ghost's arrival.
  • Ji-Hyun, once possessed, launches into a stream of apparent glossolalia.
• High Heel Hurt: Subverted - Charlotte has little difficulty navigating through the forest and the hospital despite wearing heels.
• Holy Water: Inside the asylum, Charlotte fills a small bowl with holy water and places a video camera in front of it to record its reaction. At the end of the movie, the water starts either boiling, or catching water.
• Hope Spot: While running through the woods, Charlotte finally finds the tent home base and runs inside it, hoping to find Ha-Joon. She ends up in a room in the asylum she doesn't encounter, with a contorted, naked man in the room with her.
• Horny Vikings: Ah-Yeon's quip about Charlotte and Ji-Hyun's Screw This, I'm Outta Here moment has her comparing the scene to a "Viking ride."
• Hostility on the Set: In-Universe:
  • Charlotte threatened to quit over Seung-Wook touching a patient's doll.
  • Ha-Joon increasingly comes into blows with Sung-Hoon and Seung-Wook once Charlotte and Ji-Hyun run away. He completely loses it once Sung-Hoon drops The Reveal.
• Interface Screw:
  • Sometimes in the movie, we see the image freeze or turn black while the sound continues, before it cuts back to normal. The biggest instance of this happens in the first half of the movie.
  • One of the first signs the hauntings start to get real is the garbled UI on the livestream. Ha-Joon doesn't seem to care or notice.
• In-Universe Camera: Since this movie is done in the Found Footage style, the movie's P.O.V. is shown from multiple cameras.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: Charlotte has no idea who Park Chung-hee was, and is completely surprised to learn Park Geun-hye is his daughter. Justified somewhat in that she's a second-generation Korean-American immigrant.
• Jumpscare: After Ah-Yeon and Sung-Hoon are possessed by ghosts, Je-Yoon looks down at the camera, and a bloody-faced woman shrieks in his face and possesses him too.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Played with. The Horror Times crew join up and split up depending on when the script calls for it.
  • Ha-Joon stays behind as the Mission Control. Individual segments have Ji-Hyun and Charlotte document the first and fourth floors, while Ah-Yeon and Je-Yoon are in the third. The second floor, meanwhile, is always explored with the complete group.
  • Averted by Je-Yoon who suggested the group chase after Charlotte who had threatened to leave over the doll issue.
• Locked Door: The door to room 402 is the one door in the asylum that's locked. People have tried to open it, but no one has been successful. It finally opens at the end, when Seung-Wook is wheeled into it.
• Mission Control: Ha-Joon stays behind in the tent to coordinate the entire stream, at least until the final act.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Ha-Joon slowly grows irritable as the film goes by, insisting his crew to push through for the sake of the view count.
• Money, Dear Boy: In-Universe - there could be as many as 500 million reasons Ha-Joon really wanted the stream to continue.
• Naturalized Name: Charlotte uses an English name due to her immigrant background.
• Nervous Wreck: Both Je-Yoon and Charlotte get scared easily. Ah-Yeon has a lot of fun trolling the former over this.
• Nostril Shot: When everyone is equipped with a front-facing GoPro, this is bound to happen.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Used liberally throughout the hospital scenes.
• Night-Vision Goggles: When Sung-Hoon, Je-Yoon, and Ah-Yeon find themselves in the strange water room, Je-Yoon asks Ah-Yeon for the camera. She gives it to him and turns on the night vision function to look around the room.
• The Place: The titular haunted asylum, Gonjiam, is where the movie is set.
• Real After All: Ha-Joon, Seung-Wook, and Sung-Hoon are revealed to the film's audience early on that they've staged their verbiage as well as every scare in their Horror Times livestreams, with the unscripted reactions from their guests helping to sell these scares to the audience. About halfway through the film, the two inside the asylum realize that real paranormal activity is happening, though Ha-Joon handwaves the issues away and even agrees to pay the other two more simply because they're so close to Ha-Joon's goal of one million viewers. This decision doesn't go well for anyone.
• Reality Has No Soundtrack: The movie features sound effects only in the first act. Once they arrive at the hospital, the only ones we hear are the crew and the surrounding environment.
• Room 101: A ton of brave souls have tried to unlock Gonjiam's mythical Room 402. Everyone who attempted to do so reportedly either went missing or were on coma, and our protagonists try to be the first to get in there.
• Scary Flashlight Face: When Ji-Hyun says that midnight is when the ghosts come out, Charlotte and Ah-Yeon shine their flashlights in their own faces.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Charlotte and Ji-Hyun decide they've had enough of the hauntings late in the movie and leave the asylum to go back to the tent. They're the ghosts' first victims.
    • Charlotte had already threatened to leave earlier over Seung-Wook touching a patient's doll, believing it would curse the entire crew.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Ha-Joon, Seung-Wook, and Sung-Hoon are faking the haunting at the asylum to try and pull in one million views, using the others as eyewitnesses to confirm their findings. They sometimes chuckle about what they're doing to each other when the others aren't around.
• Significant Reference Date: The asylum opened on the same day Park Chung-hee seized power and closed down the day he was killed.
• Tempting Fate: One graffiti at the entrance warns that anyone who enters the asylum will die. Another written directly below it just says "screw it."
• Those Two Guys: Sung-Hoon and Seung-Wook are almost always seen together.
• Thrill Seeker: Charlotte wants to explore seven of the world's freakiest places according to CNN. She's been in Aokigahara, Sedlec Ossuary, and La Isla de las Muñecas.
• The Watson: Ah-Yeon is a bit unfamiliar with the gear ghost hunters use, so she has the crew explain them to her.
• Voice of the Legion: Featured in Room 402 and in Seung-Wook's involuntary trip to that room.
• Volleying Insults: Downplayed - Je-Yoon and Ah-Yeon trade barbs early in the film. Their kinda-antagonistic relationship disappears once the hauntings (both real and staged) start.

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