I always thought that Asian horror movies were over the top gory and lacked story, don't ask me why. But I have begun to change my mind, partly due to 'Wishing Stairs'.
In a Korean boarding school, there is a legend about its twenty-eight steps stairway: when the twentieth-ninth step appears, the fox will grant a wish to the climber. The lesbian ballet student Kim So-hee is in deep love with her passive girlfriend and also ballet student Yoon Jin-sung. When there is a competition for a single spot in a famous ballet school in Russia, the envious Jin-sung finds the twentieth-ninth step and asks to beat the favorite So-hee. However, there is a price to pay for the wish unknown to Jin-sung and the consequence is the accidental death of So-hee. Meanwhile, the fat student Eon Hae-ju, who is despised and tormented by her classmate Han Yoon-ji, misses So-hee. When she also finds the mysterious step, she wishes the return of So-hee with tragic consequences.From the beginning I loved the concept of the Wishing Stairs. For once, characters don't have to suffer from an unexplained evil, but the evil is a consequence of their own wishes. There is something almost fair about that. And I am a sucker for anything that seems mythical and strange. But don't worry, if that's not what you're into, the movie doesn't focus on that.
At the beginning the movie seemed a bit slow, but the first scenes are crucial to setting the characters up and starting to build the tension. The feeling that something would go wrong was present from the beginning, yet I couldn't figure out how it was going to play out. Ji-hyo Song and Han-byeol Park were great as the two main characters and I really engaged with them. There is an underlying interpretation of So-hee's love for Jin-sung being more than friendly, mainly because lesbianism is a massive taboo in Korea, but again, this is not the major plot line and is merely an interpretation.
Eon Hae-ju is a very sad character, that I felt sorry for until the end. She just seems lost. I have to warn you here, if you have a weak stomach than a) why are you planning on watching scary movies and b) there are some gross, food related images in this movie. 'Wishing Stairs' is pretty good at creating a school environment that seems real. There is friendship, rivalry, bullying, all of which links to the Wishing Stairs.
There are so great twists in the storyline that stop it from being a mainstream tension-movie. There are scary moments, but it's not overly gory, except for something involving clay and later on worms. I haven't seen the other 'Whispering Corridors' movies, which are apparently all seperate movies and only share a school-setting. I do recommend it for people who are a fan of 'Black Swan', because it has the same ballet theme and it is used quite nicely to create some scare effects!
Overall, I enjoyed it, but I wasn't frightened out of my wits. And since that's what I am asking for, I will only give this three out of five Psycho faces.
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