Young web journalist Kim (Kim Bo-ra, Ghost Mansion) is in dire need of a scoop that’ll rake in the clicks and likes. She finds it in a subway train accident, when her friend Woo-won (Kim Jae-Hyun), who works security at Korea Metro, tells her about the ghost of a little girl spotted hiding in the rails of Oksu station.
Strangely, the ghost girl isn’t the only spirit hanging around Oksu. Stranger still, they all spout four-digit numbers when asked for their names. The more Kim digs, the more she uncovers, like how everyone who’s died at that platform in the last three decades bears deep scratches on their arms. Then there’s the matter of one of Kim’s sources committing suicide … before the two spoke!
The Ghost Station marks director Jeong Yong-Ki’s return to horror since his 2004 debut, The Doll Master. Unfortunately, it’s your standard Korean fright fare — substandard, even, if you’ve seen more of these things than the average bear. As if “ghost children” didn’t already drive the point home, it doesn’t tread new territory as much as repeat the familiar tropes by rote. Co-screenwriter Takahashi Hiroshi, best-known for the J-horror classic Ringu (aka The Ring) even has the gall to include a well. A well! With trapped kids! Thus creating, to use the movie’s own words, a grudge! And a curse to pass on, which Kim totally girlbosses.
Shouldn’t some blame land on the unimonikered Horang, on whose webcomic the film is based? No, since his source material is adapted in whole for the prologue. Other than establishing the subway setting, the standalone scene shares nothing with the mélange of jump scares that follows. —Rod Lott