The Ghost Station, on DVD

It is hard to say which is more corrupt, the press or the government. A tabloid reporter will learn both institutions covered up some really horrific crimes to build Korea’s most notorious subway stop. Since then, people have quietly died at Oksu Station at a steady rate, but nobody talks about it, because the construction lined the pockets of the usual suspects: politicians, unions, and contractors. However, there is some kind of presence in the station and the more it is ignored, the more widely it lashes out in Jeong Yong-ki’s The Ghost Station, which releases tomorrow on DVD and BluRay.

Kim Na-young is having a hard time generating the clicks demanding by her newspaper, a disreputable, bottom-feeding, sleaze-mongering tabloid, most likely modeled on The New York Times. They are even threatening to throw her to the wolves, when the subject of her “Miss Summer” feature turns out to be transexual and sues for the supposedly unwanted “outing.” Needing a scoop, her friend in the transit authority, Choi Woo-won, alerts her to an unusual accident, in which a speeding service train decapitated a victim along the old tracks no longer in public service, beneath the proper station.

It turns out the conductor of the service train and a witness from maintenance reported seeing a young child on the platform at the time of the accident. It is a pretty good story, but Kim is pressured to retract it when it is reported the conductor had already committed suicide by the time she took his statement. There is definitely something super-angry down there. In fact, the favorite J-horror term “grudge” is used in the English subtitles. Whatever it is, it marks its next victims with scratches on their wrists, like the ones that turn up on Choi.

It is true Ghost Station is a lot like many Korean and Japanese horror films, but that only stands to reason, since it was co-adapted from a Korean webcomic by Japanese screenwriters, Hiroshi Takashi (Ringu 1 & 2) and Koji Shiraishi (Noroi). All the elements are familiar, but Jeong understands how to marshal them to their fullest effect. Indeed, the film borrows considerably from The Ring/u, but since Takashi wrote the original, he is stealing from himself, so who are we to object?

Somehow, it still works, perhaps because the abandoned “ghost station” urban legend is such a universal perennial. The station itself is indeed a massively atmospheric location. Kim Soo-jin is also absolutely venomous as Kim’s nasty editor. Arguably, the presence of a strong flesh-and-blood villain helps considerably. Everybody else, including Kim Bo-ra as Kim Na-young, is adequate to just fine, but they all do enough to maintain the eerie vibe.

Okay, so it is not breathtakingly original, but if you want to watch a creepy movie about a haunted subway station, The Ghost Station will satisfy the craving. It gets the job done, so give it due credit. Recommended for fans of J-horror and K-horror, The Ghost Station releases tomorrow (12/19) on digital, DVD, and BluRay.