Sean Parker
I’m a big fan of world cinema—all genres and subtitles. To me, a great story transcends language boundaries or cultural differences. When I was offered to cover the upcoming Shudder exclusive Lingering, I jumped at the chance. Not only was the trailer completely alluring, but many horror films coming out of South Korea have been nothing short of amazing. Train to Busan, The Host, I Saw the Devil, and Parasite have all come out of the country in the last two decades, and each title on that list is better than the last. Lingering, or Hotel Leikeu, originally, is proof that even some less than stellar features get produced on the other side of the world.
Starting with an intriguing opening, a woman fighting for her life at a bus stop, Lingering does grab your attention before combatting its opening pace with a slow roll mentality. The story surrounds the concerns of a young woman, Yoo-mi (Lee Se-yeong), who is charged with the care of her half-sister Yoon Ji-yoo (Park So-yi). Where their mother had passed five years prior, Ji-Yoo’s father has now disappeared, leaving Yoo-mi as the only family she has left. When Told Ji-yoo would be unwelcome by orphanages given her propensity to tall tales, Yoo-mi unwillingly agrees to her guardianship, if only to place her in the care of family friend Gyeong-seon (Park ji-young).
The biggest scare I had in the film is actually right here as the sisters are en route to Gyeong-seon’s place. My audible gasp was in the form of that early horror film warning. Usually, it comes by way of an old man telling some young kids to “turn around” or “don’t go up there” because “you’re all going to die”—you know the trope. The film ties this little jump scare back to our opening scene and is a wonderfully fun and unexpected moment that came off fantastically enticing, leaving me ready for what else the film had in store for its audience.
Arriving at Hotel Lake, the girls meet with Gyeong-seon and a single maid (Park Hyo-Joo). Gyeong-seon informs Yoo-mi that the hotel is empty for a month because it’s the slowest season, and it’s cheaper to furlough the staff and keep the place empty. Gyeong-seon compels Yoo-mi to stay with Ji-yoo until the weekend, letting her grow accustomed to her new surroundings.
Hotels have a unique presence in everyday life. From one perspective, they can signify the excitement of vacations and getaways, but from another, there is always something a little awkward about them. Hotels, for as warm and inviting as they attempt to appear, can feel cold and isolative as patrons trade familiarity for adventure. This is something that I feel Lingering does extremely well, especially through its characters. Park So-yi’s performance as Ji-yoo delights with warm expressiveness, notable to the ability of the very young actress, while exploring the rooms and corridors of the empty hotel. This is a completely opposing perspective to Yoo-mi who’s character is approached as more cold and meticulous.
What is unfortunate is that from the moment the pair enter the hotel, Lingering takes on a very The Shining vibe in the story with many themes being adapted from it. This includes Lingering’s ominous room 404 parallel to The Shining’s room 237. Yoo-mi instructs Ji-yoo never to enter the room, in this case, because it was their mother’s old room. For a time, I thought maybe the film was trying to be an unofficial precursor to the Stanley Kubrick classic, trying to offer an outside story for the woman who resides in the notorious Overlook Hotel room, but the story changes course entirely.
I also felt a bit of Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water playing out here, which is about a young mother and her daughter moving into an apartment complex and unraveling a supernatural mystery. A ghost story begins to develop in Lingering as well. Ji-yoo begins telling Yoo-mi of the woman she sees in the hotel while the standoffish maid fills Yoo-mi’s head with revelations about the hotel’s history. This all leads up to Ji-yoo’s disappearance with Yoo-mi as the prime suspect and breaks off into some heavy subtext regarding mental health and illness that continue all the way through to the end of the film.
My biggest problem with Lingering is that it simply didn’t know what it wanted to be and feels like an amalgamation of many ideas pulled from idolized source material. There’s a specific scene in the second act that is ceremoniously paranormal as Yoo-mi enlists the aid of a gifted student to help find Ji-yoo. As attention-grabbing as the scene is, it feels like it doesn’t belong in the film at all by the end. I will give it credit for absolutely being one of the most tense, fun, and interesting scenes in the film, but ultimately it serves no purpose to the story, other than being inspired by something like Insidious or The Conjuring movies. The scene does end with a revelation, but that same reveal is made far better in another scene toward the end, this time without much surprise added to it.
Where the film does end up, metaphorically, happens to be one of vindication from the emotional weight we place on events that are out of our control, which is a lovely sentiment. Director Yoon Een-Kyoung cares for the characters, even the villains, in his writing and directing debut. It shows in some immensely fantastic cinematography and apt direction, especially in the final scenes. Lingering may not have been the thrill-a-minute film I thought it would be from the trailer, but it still worked better than a lot of Hollywood films that attempt to present originality by way of mash-up. Overall, I’d say the movie sits somewhere in the middle of the gauge. It’s very watchable and at times even enjoyable, but memorable will be hard for Lingering because there are films out there that have established themselves on these ideas where Lingering ultimately lurks in their shadow.
Lingering is available exclusively on Shudder beginning November 12.
