10 More Horror Films Too Scary To Finish

5. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

The Babadook
Warner Bros.

There are a lot of great, really terrifying South Korean horror movies out there and one that frequently appeared in discussions online was this: Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum.

The film starts as two teenage boys go missing in an abandoned psychiatric hospital, prompting a team of YouTube’s finest supernatural investigators to go looking for them. I’ll say this much: the sound of a ping-pong ball bouncing has never made me jump so hard.

Found-footage style horrors are a real mixed bag, as after the success of Paranormal Activity and all of its millions of sequels, any schmuck with a video-camera and some amateur actor friends began thinking they could make a movie. Gonjiam makes the style work, with wobbling close-ups of the investigators’ terrified faces interspersed among the darkened wides.

As is the norm with these asylum-based supernatural horrors, there are a few jumpscares but the film isn’t riddled with them to the point of annoyance. It’s easy to see why some may struggle to reach the end of this one, as the feeling of impending doom definitely starts to weigh on you.

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