Director Yun Jong-Chan(aka Yoon Jong-chan)’s feature debut,Sorum, is a new experience for Korean-film fans in many senses_ its lighting, sound, characters and the way it fills the viewers with a slowly building chill that lingers long after leaving the theater. It’s nice to see awell-directed film, in spite of the goose bumps.
A 29-year-old taxi driver, Yong-hyun (Kim Myeong-Min), moves into a dilapidated apartment that is about to be destroyed. He nestles in room 504. He has only three neighbors on the fifth floor. Writer Mr. Lee, piano teacher Eun-su and Sun-young (Jang Jin-Yeong), an abused wife with a bruised face and hollow eyes.
The movie doesn’t reveal many things about its characters all at once. Rather the camera follows them stubbornly and shows the dark, cracked stairways, unreadable scrawled-over walls, and the restrained sunshine flowing through the dark corridors of the apartment building. The dreary sights of the building where they carry out their everyday lives are so spookily pressing that audience gets the feeling of unavoidable, impending tragedy.
Yong-hyun is an orphan whose past is not apparent. In the beginning he imitates Bruce Lee’s martial arts motions and sound in the middle of his meal. It’s humorous but strange. Who is this man? He bursts into crazed laughter when he observes a man killed in a traffic accident. He is a suspect in the murder of his ex-girlfriend.
He is attracted to Sun-young when shetells him her son is missing. It is like both Yong-hyun and Sun-young pick upan end of a string whose other end is invisible from the tangled lump.
His new home, room 504, is no less strange than the man who lives in it. It was the spot of scandalous murder 30 years agowhen a husband, who ran away with the woman living next door, killed his wife and abandoned a newborn baby. No one could ever find the corpse. Right before Yong-hyun moved in, a would-be novelist Kwang-tae, died there in a mysterious fire.
``Sorum’’ weaves a solid net of horror that is, in a moment, flung on the audience. Director Yoon said that the most effective horror comes from our relationship with others. To weave this unforeseeable and unavoidable horror, Yoon deftly uses his actors, plot, settings, natural sounds, and low-key lighting.
When the terrifying ending unravels the secret, the audience is left trembling with a horror of life. It is horrible because it’s plausible_ or at least because it’s plausibly directed and acted.
Both Kim and Jang are persuasive acting as rootless strong characters, who are not very typical in Korean movies. They are totally alienated from society and so the recurrent scenes of a secret burialin the heavy rain seem plausible.
It is not easy to emotionally identify with the characters because of their extremely marginalized condition of life. But it is easy to identify with their tragedy and terror in terms of situation because we all become simply blind when something terrifying is happening tous, whether it is coincidence or fate.
``Sorum’’ was chosen as a closing film at the fifth Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival and was invited by three other major international fantastic film festivals. Features:

เรื่องราวสยองขวัญของผู้กำกับที่ก้าวขึ้นมาจากวงการหนังสั้นสามารถเล่าเรื่องราวสยองขวัญที่เกิดขึ้นในอพาร์ตเมนท์เก่าๆ แห่งหนึ่งได้อย่างน่าหวาดผวา โดยไม่ต้องพึ่งพาสเปเชี่ยลเอฟเฟกต์ใดๆ นอกจากภาพที่มืดทึมและเสียงดนตรีประกอบที่ชวนขนลุก