It would be pretty hard to sell you on the idea of a movie about a haunted closet but as simple as it is, that is the premise behind the south korean film entitled The Closet.

Unlike Train to Busan (2016) and Peninsula (2020), The Closet looks to get back to the roots of a pure horror genre and it is a film that almost manages to stick it’s landing as a solid film.

We begin with our main character Sang-won (Ha Jung-woo) who is trying to put his life back together after his wife dies in a tragic car accident that he was involved in.

His daughter Ina (Huh-yul) is still coping with the mental and emotional distress of surviving the crash and dealing with the loss of her mother which has strained their relationship. They decide to move to a big house in the country where the clean air and quiet surroundings are to help in their recovery. What they don’t know is that the closet inside Ina’s bedroom has a dark past that killed a woman over 22 years earlier. A portal to a dark realm threatens to pull their family apart even further and puts everyone’s life in danger.

The Closet is often accused of being an “Americanized horror film” due to its emphasis on scares rather than the substance of the story. One of the biggest problems that persist here is that the theme flirts with having a message regarding the pain of loss and the mental pain of a loss of life. However, that element is presented far too late into what is a mediocre horror film with a paint by numbers storytelling. 

 

2.5/5

 

 

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