THE STORY – A woman with a hearing impairment who is haunted by sounds linked to her sister’s disappearance and the presence of a malevolent spirit, leads to a dark secret and the revelation of a mysterious entity.
THE CAST – Lee Sun-bin, Kim Min-seok, Han Su-a, Ryu Kyung-soo, Jeon Ik-ryung & Baek Joo-hee
THE TEAM – Kim Soo-jin (Director), Lee Je-hui & Kim Yong-hwan (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
South Korea’s relationship with horror cinema has always been deeply psychological, steeped in trauma, social unrest, and lingering spirits, both literal and emotional. From the visceral intensity of “The Wailing” to the ghostly melancholy of “A Tale of Two Sisters,” the country’s genre output doesn’t simply scare – it lingers. “Noise,” having had its North American premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival, is an assured debut by Kim Soo-jin. It’s a film that can’t be chalked down to just a tale about a haunted apartment; it’s an exploration of trauma and how it manifests.
The film opens with Ju-hee (Han Soo-a), a woman visibly on edge, recording the pounding noises from the apartment above her. We’ve all had a neighbour who makes us feel like we’re going insane with all their stomping and banging. But here, it’s taken to a whole new level. As the lights in her apartment flicker and the TV distorts, a wailing phone call and a shape on the balcony hint at something far more sinister. It’s a gripping setup, immediately effective in rooting us in the protagonist’s growing paranoia. After we are left with the shock of its opening, the story pivots. Enter Ju-hee’s estranged sister Ju-young (Lee Sun-bin), a factory worker who has a hearing impairment. Her introduction is a masterclass in perspective: surrounded by deafening machinery, the soundscape is brilliantly muffled, immersing us in her world before she even speaks.
After receiving a phone call from a detective stating that Ju-hee has been reported missing, Ju-young begins a search for her sister. She returns to Ju-hee’s decaying apartment complex, an ominous building with a mysterious mould infestation and a board chairwoman who would rather cover up problems than fix them. The ceiling of Ju-hee’s unit is padded in foam in a desperate attempt to block out the noise. That attempt, of course, proved to fail. Soon, the noise finds Ju-young, too.
What makes “Noise” so unsettling is, well, it’s noise. It weaponizes sound in a way few horror films dare, transforming it into a language of dread. Sound is essential to the story, and each specific noise carries a significance that the film ties to later on in its narrative. Even when Ju-young removes her hearing aids, the film doesn’t let the audience off the hook. We’re thrust into silence, vulnerable and directionless, especially in scenes like a harrowing chase in a dark basement. It’s not unlike Mike Flanagan’s “Hush,” but here, the loss of sound turns out to be both a character’s survival mechanism and a source of terror.
As Ju-young digs deeper, she uncovers strange details: anomalies about previous tenants, other disappearances, and a man who lives downstairs who is losing his grip on reality, pleading for the noise in Ju-hee’s apartment to stop, even though Ju-young isn’t making any. Is it a shared delusion? A curse? Or something else? “Noise” intentionally blurs the line between psychological horror and supernatural thriller. There are haunting background images – a ghostly figure behind fogged glass, a disfigured face emerging from the dark – that make you question what’s real.
Through flashbacks, we learn about the sisters’ shared trauma: losing their parents in a tragic accident. Ju-young once lived with Ju-hee but had to move out due to her sister’s obsessive behaviour around the mysterious noises. The emotional weight of their fractured relationship adds poignancy to Ju-young’s increasingly desperate search. Her phone dives into dozens of eerie recordings left behind by Ju-hee. First mundane, then disturbing, until they begin to take on a life of their own. The noise becomes a presence, a character, a symptom of unresolved grief, or maybe a consequence of the building’s haunted legacy.
And that’s where the film falters. While the emotional core is clear, the larger mystery isn’t. As the pieces come together, a muddled explanation attempts to bridge supernatural haunting with a more grounded, psychological, or “real” cause, but the resolution lacks clarity. The twist, while thematically rich, doesn’t hit as hard as it aims to.
What stays with you is the atmosphere. The building is its own ecosystem of decay and despair, with garbage rotting in the basement, ignored by tenants and the board alike. It’s symbolic of the rot everyone tries to ignore – personal trauma, systemic negligence, communal silence. And yet, through all this, “Noise” doesn’t lose its grip. It keeps up the tension, the pacing relentless, even when the film doesn’t fully explain the “why,” the “how” is executed with terrifying precision.
Lee Sun-bin’s performance is a standout – nuanced, physical, and emotionally raw. You feel her unravelling, her grief, and her terror. As she becomes entangled in the same horror that consumed her sister, you’re never quite sure if she’s losing her mind or finally hearing the truth.
“Noise” may not be a perfect Korean horror, but it embodies many elements of the greats: emotionally layered and viscerally terrifying. Kim Soo-jin demonstrates a masterful command of sound and sensory storytelling, giving us a horror film where fear isn’t just heard – it’s felt deep within. While it stumbles in explaining its central mystery, the experience it offers is haunting. Like the residual hum of trauma, “Noise” lingers.
