Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

The owner of a horror channel and his crew decide to livestream from the abandoned Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital. The plan is to stage a few moments to raise the viewer count. Then things start happening that nobody staged. Jung Bum-shik directed. It is shot in found footage style. Most of it was filmed at the National Maritime High School in Busan, with the crew following the real hospital's floor plan exactly. CNN Travel had listed the actual building in Gwangju among the seven freakiest places on the planet. Getting it released required a legal fight. Before the opening the hospital's owner sued to stop distribution, arguing the bad publicity would make the building harder to sell. A Seoul court ruled for the film in March 2018. The building was demolished two months later. On a 2.2 million dollar budget it grossed around 21 million worldwide and became the third most-watched horror film in Korean history. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 92 percent, with one critic writing that it mastered found footage horror. Who it is for: viewers who like found footage horror and claustrophobic location tension. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by a shaking camera or looking for character depth. The film keeps its people deliberately thin.