For a found footage horror film, 'Gonjiam: Haunted asylum' strikes me as perhaps a little more polished in its production design than similar features. With that consideration in mind it's easy to engage with the movie without special concern for indelicacies commonly associated with the genre. The isolation of the setting, the almost Brutalist-style architecture of the institution, and careful, meticulous set decoration quickly work to start weaving atmosphere. Factor in the deep shadow that dominates every moment past the exposition, and the film does a fantastic job of forging a chilling air just from our instinctual fears kicking into overdrive, as though we were really in the facility alongside the characters.

'Gonjiam' relies substantially on that pervasive ambience of profound disquiet, and a significant portion of the runtime passes with this alone very capably sustaining an exquisite sense of unease and dread. Furthermore - as viewers watching a genre film, we pointedly know to anticipate Something at an unknown time, and there's a second level of suspense added with that knowledge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. After aberrations do eventually manifest, there are sparing instances of what one could say are "conventional" horror scares, but in my opinion the painstaking construction of the picture so thoroughly primes us for heightened terror as to amplify those frights far beyond common expectations. More to the point, the visions to greet us mostly present with what I, personally, find most concretely unsettling in the genre - unnatural posture, movement, noise, vocalizations. These build off the consuming atmosphere to engineer intensely hair-raising scenes, and once the most powerful feelings of acute, particular distress pass, I cannot overstate how fulfilling the experience has been.

It's been a very long time since I've expected horror movies to provide real scares. Mostly I just hope for a creepy, cringe-worthy fun time, and if a filmmaker can manage to evoke sensations with a strong atmosphere, or offer some singularly spine-tingling sights, then these just make it all the better. I entered 'Gonjiam: Haunted asylum' with no foreknowledge or especial assumptions, and have been absolutely blown away by what I got. I can't remember the last time I watched a horror film that elicited such sharp, protracted, continuous, and lasting autonomic and emotional responses. I'm so impressed!

The effects are outstanding, the cast is great, and all aspects of the picture were clearly considered with utmost care. Gratifyingly, the movie completely enraptures us with the active experience of the web series crew without any true need for suggested lore and background to be expanded into a dominant narrative, as we so often see happen in similar tales. In the past I haven't held found footage films at large in very high regard, but I've recently watched a few very well made ones - and this easily bests them. Director Jung Bum-shik, co-writer Park Sang-min, and everyone else involved is to be applauded for making a feature in a niche genre, and a ghost story no less, that delivers such astounding visceral thrills. It's captivating, wholly absorbing, and is without question one of the best horror films I've ever watched: as far as I'm concerned, 'Gonjiam: Haunted asylum' is a must-see.