I don’t know what I was expecting when I sat down to check out Ghost Train (original Korean title: 괴기열차), but was I expecting to be spooked when I went upstairs for the night and had to turn the lights off on my main floor? Hell, no, I wasn’t, but after 95 minutes of unremitting terror, there I was, taking the steps two at a time and running for the safety of my bedroom. Ghost Train is one of the most frightening horror movies in recent memory; we’re talking Sinister-level here—the atmosphere, the character work, and the scares all combine to create a suffocating blanket of dread under which our breath is taken away little by little until the film makes its last cut to black and the credits mercifully roll.
What writer Jo Ba-reun does so infinitely well is to dispense with the unnecessary, cutting right down to the stuff needed to make us care about everyone who crosses in front of the lens. Even ancillary people (or whom we think are ancillary people) matter, like a train station employee walking a subway tunnel to check if someone’s on the tracks in the cold opening, because Jo’s script loosely ties everyone together. Director Tak Se-woong takes these cues and makes sure to swing us toward utter belief in the tales being told and the harrowing stakes detailed in each story of this anthology film.
The wraparound concerns us with YouTuber YouTube content creator Da-kyung (Joo Hyun-young), whose declining viewership has pushed her to cover the story of Gwanglim Station, seemingly the locus for a series of disappearances and ghost sightings. Da-kyung’s part of a content farm, Youniv; her supervisor Woo-jin (Choi Bo-min) is gently encouraging her and trying to help her do better, but rival creator Hye-jin (Kim Ji-in)—a beauty YouTuber—is constantly racking up the views and flirting with Woo-jin, in whom Da-kyung might have a romantic interest. (And it might be reciprocal, based on Woo-jin’s demeanor with her.) Her channel is getting hundreds of viewers rather than the hundreds of thousands it used to get, and she’s looking for something to get her numbers up.
I know that content creation is a huge task; it’s not like you just wake up, turn your camera on, point, and shoot. There’s a lot to contend with—scripts, rights issues, monetization, and working hard to stay visible. The most successful YouTubers try, fail, try again, fail, try again, then—hopefully—find a niche that starts viewers pouring in. Ghost Train shows Da-kyung’s content farm as an office job; for some reason, I find this a little more accessible than just watching YouTube creators at their homes or working alone. It gives the opportunity for an undercurrent of vanity and pride to run through this film, and it affects everyone, from Da-kyung on down. Even the unnamed stationmaster (Jeon Bae-soo), whom Da-kyung bribes with expensive spirits for his stories, isn’t immune to this; however, as we find out, there’s a reason he’s giving in and divulging the station’s secrets to Da-kyung, who sees him as a turnkey to her success, not as a person.
The stories he tells have the simultaneous effect of grabbing you by the throat while reaching for your guts to rip them out. These are the kinds of tales that make you petrified of being alone in a deserted public place, the kind that send you running for the nearest exit in the hopes that you’ll encounter a friendly face, any face, just so you can have your fear alleviated for the briefest of seconds. That is, until you find out that the face you might think is friendly belongs to whatever’s come to haunt you and take you to the other side. As Da-kyung feeds the stationmaster more alcohol and records his stories, she doesn’t think much of what he’s saying, only hoping each tale will get better and net more views on her channel.
These are morality tales he tells, although they come with more dire consequences than the kind we grew up hearing at our parents’ knees: A poor man discovers a trove of coins that allows him to disappear anyone at will, leaving only their clothes and belongings behind, giving him the opportunity to steal their money; a woman considering plastic surgery is chased by a bandaged woman threatening to pour acid on her while wearing a horrifying grin; rumors abound of a religious cult, whose leader commanded his followers to kill themselves to honor him; a negging slacker is haunted by a woman who can’t stop banging her head against a window. All of these stories—including the wraparound and Da-kyung’s interviews—carry with them the notion that their problems can be fixed quickly, without regard to anyone else.
Each tale does grow more intense as Da-kyung and the stationmaster’s time together wears on, and they play out exactly how you think they’d play out, with the sin being turned upon the sinner… but there’s something in Jo Ba-reun’s script that turns our expectations upside-down, and the horror of each tale would send any listener running for the door. But like Da-kyung, we sit with bated breath to hear the journeys and outcomes destined for each victim. Kwon Yeong-il’s darkened photography helps Tak Se-woong terrify us down to our very bones, at once making us wish for lighter moments but also wanting none; they create a world full of pressure—Da-kyung’s struggle to get to the top being the heaviest—that causes each character to crumble and dissolve underneath it. Ghost Train is an exemplary horror film, full of the scares that it requires, but also stocked with the stories and personal intrigue to support these scares, making them more meaningful and forceful. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself sleeping with the lights on after this one.
