7 of The October 13

For the next film in the October 13 this year, I went to Netflix for a 2024 Philippine found footage film based on a Korean film from 2018 called Gonijam: Haunted Asylum.

According to IMDB, “Reality TV stars face mounting supernatural horrors while filming at haunted Xinglin Hospital in Taiwan. As paranormal activity intensifies, group dynamics crumble and a dark force manipulates their survival choices.“

The idea of a group of online celebrities doing a livestream inside a horrendous haunted asylum and streaming their eventual deaths across the internet does not sound like a situation that is improbable. In fact, I could see something like this taking place in the world of YouTube today.

It seemed as if most of these actors were playing some form of themselves during the film. They all did an exceptional job of creating tension and anxiety through their outright terror and panic to escape the horrors that they were facing.

A few of the deaths were terrible, including the ones that were more quiet, like Zarck, who appears to have caught some kind of deadly virus and he was breaking our in scabs and growths.

While a lot of the dialogue was members of the team just calling out each other’s names (aka “ALEXA!”, “QUEN!” etc.), it built that feeling of confusion and hysteria.

This was a good use of the found footage subgenre and the movie had some interesting comments to make on the online community. The responses to the live stream on the side of the screen were very realistic.