In a year featuring so much upheaval and unrest, the popularity of ‘comfort-food' fare has become increasingly relied on for many trying to escape what's going on in the rest of the world. This is precisely what Kim Yoon-een's latest film “Lingering” turns out to be, a comfort-food supernatural genre outing that doesn't do anything remotely impressive but serves itself well for what it's trying to do, making for an overall exact definition of the term which can now be seen streaming on the genre service Shudder.
Wanting the best for her friends' daughter, Yoo-mi (Lee Se-yeong) decides to take Ji yoo (Park So-yi) to a remote hotel in the countryside to help out until her mother can return for her. With her Aunt Gyeong-seon's (Park Ji-young) help, they decide to stay at the hotel when Ji-yoo takes a liking to the place and agrees to help out with incidental tasks around the hotel during their stay. While the two begin to establish a relationship, a series of strange events around the hotel begin to force Yoo-mi into investigating the past history of the building, which reveals a disturbing connection to the strange being Ji-yoo continually claims is around the area. Finally aware of what's going on and the threat caused by the supernatural entity haunting the hotel, she tries to save Ji-yoo from the dark forces after her.
Overall, “Lingering” manages to get quite a lot right. One of it's better aspects is director Yoon-een's ability to offer up a heartwarming story at the center between Yoo-mi and Ji-yoo. Doing the journey as a favor for her friend, the bond that develops, as a result, is impressively handled. Yoon-een makes it so it's quite possible to believe they are related through the interactions and protective nature that forms here..Once we're aware of the protective and motherly focus at the center of the film, the slow emergence of the horror elements towards Ji-yoo become all the more frightening.
Those horror elements are another enjoyable and entertaining aspect in “Lingering.” Starting slowly with the odd disembodied creaking noise or whisper in the darkness, a discovery about the past connections to the hotel and the payoff to a series of innocent children's games provides a nice framework for the later scenes of the spirit lingering around the hotel. The constant appearance of the spirit through several decent jump-scares does help this even more, with the attack on the spiritualist Yoo-mi calls in to help out or the search through the darkened ruins of the hotel basement. The spirited finale adds some life and some decent gore to this one.
That said, there are a few issues in “Lingering.” The main problem is the general routine-ness and overly familiar feeling brought up, featuring yet another in a long list of films about black-haired female ghosts targeting innocent people. Director Kim brings nothing new to the formula or has a clever twist. It's simply running through the same storyline beats in a new locale which is about the only original feature on display here. That goes to show the level of creativity present, since even using the location of a hotel doesn't offer a lot of ingenuity in the film.
The other problem is the general apathy created when it's not centered around Yoo-mi and Ji-yoo. There's very little of any interest derived from the investigation about the hotels' past that connects Yoo-mi to the history of what happened and most of the side characters serve no purpose in the film that couldn't have been done without them anyway, rendering everything with a bland feel. Aided by Yoon-een's slack tempo that keeps everything at a one-note feel regardless of what's happening, these overall bring the film down.
Despite not being generally bad altogether, “Lingering” tends to run through so many of the same formulaic tropes and setups that whatever good is developed here is washed away by that repetitiveness. Viewers new to Asian horror cinema or not completely turned off by this will find the film far more enjoyable while more seasoned viewers will be somewhat turned off by the formula as a whole even with the overall high watchability present.
