A Tale Of Two Sisters review

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The female siblings in question are Soo-mi (Lim Su-jeong) and Soo-yeon (Mun Geun-yeong), a motherless pair who've returned from psychiatric hospital to live with dad (Kim Kap-su) and his new wife Eun-joo (Yum Jung-ah). No chance of getting back to normal though, because there's a strange, possibly phantom presence out to spook the sisters...

Marrying haunted-house horror with evil-stepmum melodrama, this Korean slow-burner has plenty going for it: a clammy atmosphere, psychological resonance and a series of short, sharp shocks. All tasty ingredients, but the overall flavour's not distinctive enough for this to stand apart from such recent Asian chillers as The Eye and Dark Water. Matters aren't helped by the narrative's murkier moments, hairpin twists making things opaque when they should be clear.

Still, you have to give writer/director Kim Ji-woon his due: wallpaper hasn't been this scary since the '70s...

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