Horror films set to chill S. Korean audiences in summer

A slew of homegrown horror and thriller films are ready to make audiences feel a shiver cascading down their spines and forget the oppressive summer heat outside in the coming months.

The action thriller "Midnight," scheduled to be released simultaneously in theaters and via streaming platform Tving on Wednesday, will open the prime months of July and August for scary movies.

The film, a directorial debut of Kwon Oh-seung, follows a deaf girl who is stalked by a serial killer after witnessing a murder at midnight, with muted sounds creating cutting-edge horror and thrills.

On the same day, the horror "The Grotesque Mansion," directed by Jo Bareun, will also hit local screens. The five-episode omnibus film revolves around a webtoon writer, who visits a mysterious dilapidated apartment for his work and experiences scary events surrounding the timeworn residence.

In July, "The Medium," a Thai horror film produced by South Korean director Na Hong-jin, will immerse moviegoers in the supernatural for those tired of the humid weather.

Directed by Thai filmmaker Banjong Pisanthanakun, the movie tells the story of a family experiencing a shamanistic spiritual inheritance in a rural region of Thailand.

It is one of the most anticipated films this summer in South Korea for the collaboration of horror masters of the two countries.

Na has created commercially and critically successful thrillers and horrors, like "The Chaser" (2008), "The Yellow Sea" (2010) and "The Wailing" (2016), while the Thai director took the helm of the horror film "Shutter" (2004) and the horror romance "Pee Mak" (2014), Thailand's biggest box-office hit of all time.

"The Medium" will have a world premier at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival slated for July 8-18 and hit South Korean screens on July 14.

The Korean occult mystery thriller "The Cursed: Dead Man's Prey," the spinoff of TV series "The Cursed" (2020), will begin its theatrical run on July 28.

Written by Yeon Sang-ho of the hit zombie thriller "Train to Busan" (2016), the film focuses on a serial murder case committed by a zombie.

The mystery-horror movie "Guimoon," which means ghost door in English, will appear in August.

The story starts in a community center that has been closed for decades since a mass murder in the 1990s and a professional psychic and a group of students are involved in mysterious incidents there.

It will be released in ScreenX and 4DX special versions, as well as conventional 2-D presentations, expected to catch the eyes of viewers who love the lifelike scenes with bizarre and eerie reality horror. (Yonhap)