I love found footage horror. Maybe not as much as our Editor-in-Chief, Mary Beth McAndrews, but in the presence of royalty, I can’t hope to compete. While the subgenre hasn’t been chugging along quite as swiftly as it did in the early 2010s, where it seemed like every other horror movie would be adopting the conceit, there are still some remarkable entries that sneak their way into our homes to scare us silly with handheld cameras and dizzying footage. Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor from 2023? I scream aloud in my living room. Give me good found footage, you’ll see me lose it.
The Outwaters, the Horror in the High Desert trilogy, and so much more are keeping the subgenre afloat, even if there’s considerably less mainstream interest in POV horror than there once was. Resultantly, other countries have had to pick up the slack, and we’ve imported some pretty stellar found footage horror movies as a result. Last year’s MadS was one of the best movies of the year, and 2023’s Marui Video is an underrated, must-see gem. Back in 2018, what’s commonly believed to be among the scariest found footage horror movies of the entire century arrived stateside. It’s a favorite among many, but still criminally underseen. Allow me to invite you to Gonjiam. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is now streaming on Prime Video and Tubi.
Per Prime Video: An internet broadcaster recruits a group to appear on their ‘experience the horror’ show that will take place at the Gonjiam Mental Hospital, known as one of the world’s 7 Horrorific Sites.
In our original review of Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, we wrote, “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is the real deal. Deeply unsettling and unrelentingly scary, it is a film that must be seen.” That bad boy scored four-and-a-half out of five stars. That’s no small feat. Yeah, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is the real deal. No, it doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before in a found footage horror movie, but like The Conjuring before it, it perfects its subgenre, distilling it down to the scariest possible output imaginable.
Equipped with some stellar audio design, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is made to be seen in a dark room with the volume up. Sure, it’ll haunt you for days, but it’s such a fierce and frightening experience, it deserves your total immersion. You’ll be sweating, you’ll be shaking, and like the characters in the film, you’ll be wishing for it to be all over, if only so you can catch your breath. With the film now streaming on Prime Video, I encourage you to check it out ASAP.
What do you think? Any plans to check out Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum? If you do, let me know your thoughts over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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