I've got to admit, when I first heard how the South Korean government initially wanted to ban Whispering Corridors upon it's initial release in 1998, it made me want to check it out. I was excited to see what all the fuss was about, and looked forward to seeing the film and deciding for myself how brutal it really way. Now, Tartan's Region 1 DVD gives North American audiences the chance to do just that.

The story takes place in a Korean girls school where something strange is going on. Jin-Ju, a former student at the school who died a horrible death, has come back to haunt the hallowed halls of education, and she starts her come back off with a bang by murdering a teacher who laid on some pretty serious beatings back before Jin-Ju passed on into the great beyond.

The school tries to cover up the murder, claiming the teacher killed himself, but the students soon start talking about the vengeful ghost of Jin-Ju and it doesn't take long for word to spread.

Soon, another former student, Eun-Young, returns to the school, but she's not a vengeful spirit, nope. Not at all. She's come back to teach. As she settles into her new job she gets to know the usual assortment of weird kids and class misfits. Jin-Ju isn't gone though, and she's not finished wreaking havoc on the school either.

Whispering Corridors is an interesting and not so subtle critique on the Korean school system. It portrays the halls of academia as stiffling, rigid, cold, and careless and it portrays many of the teachers as heartless and abusive. As a sort of socio-political commentary, it's not half bad. It makes its point by letting us get to know the students a little bit at a time and demonstrating to us how and why they have the problems that they do, outside of the evil ghost running around and knocking off the odd person here and there.

The problem with the film lies in the fact that it doesn't put enough emphasis on the horror aspect to succeed as a scary movie, which, like it or not, is how it is being portrayed. The ghost plot disappears about half way through the movie where it all switches gears and heads into teen drama territory for a while, only to reappear at the end to wrap things up in an interesting, if slightly ambiguous, manner. There are a couple of inventive kill scenes and a few nice moments of tension, but sadly those are few and far between.

In the end, because the film doesn't concentrate strongly enough on the human drama side or on vengeful ghost side of the story, it doesn't really succeed at either of them. We don't get quite involved enough in the drama to care too much for the characters, and the scares don't come frequently or strongly enough to freak us out.

Video:

The anamorphic 1.78.1 widescreen transfer wasn't as hot as I'd hoped it would be. For a film of such a recent vintage, there was a surprising amount of specks and minor print damage present on the transfer, as well as a high amount of grain. There aren't any problems with edge enhancement or mpeg compression in the film, Tartan has done a good job authoring the DVD in that regard, but the picture could have been cleaned up a little bit more. The colors looked a little muted, but I'm fairly certain that was an artistic decision on the director and cinematographer's part and not a flaw in the DVD itself.

On a semi related note, I really wish Tartan wouldn't 'bug' the review copies they send out. Every time 'PROPERTY OF TARTAN VIDEO' flashed up on the screen it sucked me right out of the film. Obviously those 'bugs' won't be on the version available in retail outlets, but it's hard to be impartial to a film when you keep having the moments ruined by large amounts of inappropriate text flashing on the screen.