'Ghost market' of veteran actors and K-pop idols convenes for 'The Cursed,' an anthology that throws everything at the wall
In Korea, summer is the season for horror films, the idea being that you fight the heat with chills down your spine. But "The Cursed" arrives as autumn creeps in, when the weather is already cooling and audiences might not need that extra shiver.
It's an omnibus affair, five episodes strung together with different characters and storylines. The anthology format has become something of a go-to strategy for Korean horror in recent years — throw enough scares at the wall, and something's bound to stick. "Strange" tried it in 2022, "Body Parts" in 2023 and, just this July, we got "Ghost Train" starring SNL Korea's Joo Hyun-young. None of them particularly caught fire.
Despite minimal publicity, "The Cursed" has assembled names you've definitely heard before. Veteran character actor Yoo Jae-myung, who's been in everything from "Reply 1988" to "Itaewon Class," plays a detective chasing a kidnapper who stumbles into something far stranger. Moon Chae-won from "Good Doctor" and "Flower of Evil" gets into a bloody brawl with her neighbor over a cursed package that promises to fix her looks.
"I'm actually quite scared of horror films," Moon said at Tuesday's press conference at CGV Yongsan. "I can't really watch them as an audience member. But as an actor, I'd never tried this genre before, never even gotten offers for it. So when this came along, I thought this could be something new."
Perhaps the film's real curiosity is its parade of K-pop idols making their acting debuts or early forays into film. Solar from Mamamoo leads the first episode as an aspiring writer who comes to a rural village with its own haunted tree. Bae Su-min (Sumin from StayC) plays a high schooler whose ambitious mother will do anything for her daughter's perfect grades.
Cha Sun-woo — B1A4's Baro — follows Yoo's detective into a subterranean nightmare where bodies sprout flowers from their faces. Son Ju-yeon, who performs as Eunseo in WJSN, turns up as a study abroad student in Vietnam whose influencer ambitions lead her to film in all the wrong places. They all get properly dismantled by each episode's end.
"I listen to scary stories every night before bed, that's how obsessed I am with horror," Solar said, visibly excited. "Getting to make a horror film felt like winning the lottery. Plus working with director Hong and this cast — I couldn't believe my luck."
For Bae Su-min, it was her first time acting, period. "I was honored just to be here," she said. "I'd just graduated not long ago, so those memories were still fresh — how we talked, the pressure we felt. It helped me play a high schooler because I'd just been one."
What results from this cast assemblage? A confused jumble of every horror trope imaginable: occult rituals, body horror, grand guignol bloodshed, schoolgirls facing the supernatural (that particular subgenre that Asian horror can't quit) and long-haired ghosts crawling from dark corners (think of Sadako's less imaginative cousins). The episodes barely communicate with each other; if anything, they are unified only in their general silliness and lack of invention. Only a handful of conveniently scattered motifs give the semblance of cohesion without actually providing any.
Director Hong Won-ki seemed to have grander ambitions. "I wanted to build this world of the ghost market," he explained. "It's a marketplace where you can buy your desires. Each episode shows people with different wants, but they're all connected through this market."
The film's one unique element might be its final episode, shot entirely in Vietnam with local actors.
"We spent two weeks in Vietnam, and it really felt like studying abroad," Son Ju-yeon recalled. "I was speaking English with the local staff the whole time. My English improved more than my acting, honestly."
Hong had his own reasons for venturing abroad. "I wanted to connect the Korean ghost market with one in Vietnam — show that these desires are universal. We found this perfect location there, this place with genuinely dark energy.
"The local crew would burn incense and pray before entering. It was 40 degrees Celsius every day, though you can't tell from the footage."
"The Cursed" opens Sept. 17.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com
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