I could not help but get tickled more than once while watching South Korean film “Idiot Girls and School Ghost: School Anniversary”, which is as ridiculously funny as its rather long title suggests. Clearly influenced by not only “Whispering Corridors” (1998) but also a number of meta horror films such as “Scream” (1996), the movie has a cheerful fun with its familiar genre conventions and clichés, and the result is one of the funniest South Korean films of last year. 

After the prologue which will amuse you a lot if you are familiar with those countless found footage horror films out there, the movie introduces three senior high school students: Ji-yeon (Kim Do-yeon), Eun-byul (Eunseo), and Hyun-jung (Kang Shin-hee). Ji-yeon aspires to be a filmmaker someday, so she tries to make a little movie of her own, and Eun-byul is her lead actress while Hyun-jung serves as their cinematographer.

However, their prospects are not exactly bright right now. They all want to go to any good college for achieving their respective dreams, but, alas, their recent test score result is not that good to say the least. As their teachers point out how underachieving they are, the girls come to worry more about the upcoming college entrance exam, which is a hefty and stressful obstacle for any senior high school student out there in South Korea.

On one day, Ji-yeon comes across a mysterious video tape while spending another evening alone in the broadcasting department of the school. This video tape contains a video clip shot in the school on the evening of its anniversary day in 1998, and this video clip shows three senior student girls doing something quite risky just for getting the perfect score on the college entrance exam. After they summoned a ghost living somewhere in the school, they had to play a hide and seek game with this ghost, and this game had to be continued till dawn.

At first, this video clip simply looks like a well-made joke to Ji-yeon, but, what do you know, she soon finds herself frequently haunted by that ghost in question. After doing some research in the school library, she locates one of those three girls, who willingly tells more about the ghost and the game to be played. She and her two friends fortunately won at that time, but, considering how the ghost will severely punish its challengers if they lose, it looks like nobody has succeeded during last 26 years. 

Because the ghost is going to haunt her at least for one year, Ji-yeon decides to handle this serious matter for herself, and her two friends subsequently get involved in her situation. They do not initially believe her words much at first, so they casually watch that video clip, and, yes, they also find themselves targeted by the ghost.

While the circumstance becomes much more serious for the girls, the movie sticks to its lightweight tone as steadily throwing numerous comic moments, and it becomes more humorous as the girls become all the more active about dealing with their big problem. Often conscious of those genre rules and conventions just like the main characters of those Scream flicks, they are ready to fight against the ghost with their camera to record everything, and they even recruit a quirky junior student who knows a lot about spirit and religion.

The second half of the movie is about how they fight against their opponent on the evening of the school anniversary, and that is when the movie becomes more humorous. While often feeling as spooky as required, it comes to show more sense of humor as the girls go through a series of perils inside the school, and it even parodies that famous moment in “Whispering Corridors”. When the story and characters eventually arrive at the climax as expected, the mood becomes all the more amusing as the movie deftly balances itself between horror and comedy, and we come to root for the girls more than before.

It certainly helps that the four main cast members of the film have good comic chemistry among them. As their characters bounce from one narrative point to another with more amusement for us, they ably fill their respective characters with enough spirit and personality, and they are all solid in each own comic moments to be savored. Although I must confess that I am not so familiar with any of them, Kim Do-yeon, Eunseo. and Kang Shin-hee show here that they are promising actresses to watch, and I hope I will enjoy more of their talent in the future. In case of Jeong Ha-dam, she finally gets a chance to do comedy and gladly demonstrates another side of her considerable talent, and she effortlessly steals every minute of hers in the film. 

On the whole, “Idiot Girls and School Ghost: School Anniversary” is entertaining for its cheerful wit and humor to be savored, and director/writer Kim Min-ha, who has already moved onto her next feature film, shows that she is another talented filmmaker to watch. To be frank with you, I belatedly watched the movie only after I was requested to watch and then evaluate it and several other South Korean independent films for an upcoming local film award ceremony, and I must tell you that I found myself quite delighted after enduring several other nominees which disappointed me in one way or another during this week. In short, this is a small gem to be appreciated by anyone who enjoyed “Whispering Corridors”, and you will not be disappointed once you go along with its vibrantly free-wheeling comic spirit.