Guimoon: The Lightless Door (2021) Review: Underwhelming

Guimoon: The Lightless Door is a South Korean horror-thriller movie directed by Sim Deok-geun and starring Kim Kang-woo, Kim So-hye, Lee Jung-hyoung, and Hong Jin-gi, alongside other cast members. The movie is 85 minutes long.

– Guimoon review does not contain spoilers –

Guimoon: The Lightless Door comes at you fast and hard. After going through a bunch of exorcism tools, you fall directly in front of a community centre where an exorcism is taking place. After a gruesome turn of events, you realise that this might be the place where we will spend a considerable amount of time at.

That’s fine, haunted house movies are a norm and sometimes they do stick. South Korean horror is always a welcome watch since most try to do something different, unlike their western counterparts. Anyway, we meet the shaman’s son four years after the incident. His mother’s death has really affected him negatively but he isn’t a shaman and is adamant about finding out what actually happened to her.

There’s a catch here which I won’t get into, but it’s interesting to learn of it while watching the movie since it opens up doors (see what I did there) for something confusing and unique, a concept that not a lot of horror movies incorporate into their stories. Anyway, Guimoon’s story is interesting in its own right.

The shooting of Guimoon took place inside an actual abandoned building so the actors, as well as the audience, might feel a tinge of creepy while watching it. The feeling is quite evident, at least on the face of the protagonists. The switcheroo moments are always moments when you will wonder what’s going to happen next.

I feel like the sound design is a great addition to Guimoon since it adds a lot of tension and intrigue to its horror elements and goes well with it. We all know that a good sound design can make or break a movie and that’s what happens here. It’s a bit loud sometimes and drowns out everything else at other moments but it matches the vibe of the movie well and keeps things together.

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That being said though, Guimoon is a bit confusing. Although the addition of more people other than Du-jin might seem interesting at first, however, after a while, you wonder what the point of adding them was since it just goes down a direction that is confusing and a bit annoying. The scares go down after the initial chaos and then you just sit there and wonder what the point of it all was.

At the end of Guimoon, you are left wondering about the possibilities that the story had, all the while going over what you just saw. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few good twists and turns, but as a whole, it’s confusing and underwhelming and that is never a good look for any movie, let alone a horror flick.

Summing up: Guimoon: The Lightless Door

Guimoon: The Lightless Door has its moments of intrigue and creepiness and some clever twists and turns. But, as a whole, it’s a rather confusing and underwhelming experience that leaves you with a somewhat bad taste in your mouth. Overall, this is a lukewarm horror thriller that has very few moments of genuine horror.

Watch Guimoon: The Lightless Door here.

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