Noise Review (Fantasia 2025)
Noise is an imaginative sound design, and terrifying set pieces boost it into the upper tier of Korean fright flicks
Ju-hee has disappeared from the apartment she shares with her hearing-impaired sister Joo-young. Plagued by inexplicable sounds and hounded by a supernatural presence, she must navigate snobby neighbours, inept policing, and a basement overflowing with refuse to rescue her sibling from ‘A spider’s web of grudges’.
The film is essentially 93 minutes of bubbling unease that frequently boils over into frightening set pieces and nasty revelations. Director Kim Soo-jin gives our flesh little respite between skin-crawling menace and jump scare goosebumps. There is no danger that horror fans will feel short-changed, given the lavish exchange rate of screen time to shocks on offer here.
It’s revitalising to witness a horror film simply being a horror film, and even more satisfying to watch one with more in its creepy arsenal than just string stabs and gory exploitation to frighten the wits and put the serious shits up fear fans. Instead, Noise weaponises looming dread and audio-based anxiety to atomise the air with a palpable unease that drifts down like motes of poisonous dust.
This brooding tale of supernatural vengeance and knife-wielding neighbours does not seek to reinvent the Korean horror cinema wheel. Still, it has enough imagination and energy to spin it in some different and dangerous directions.
Joo-young’s hearing impairment provides the ideal catalyst for much of the terror as her various technical aids give her a perspective hidden from others. We often drop in and out of her earscape with clever dips in the soundtrack that elevate tension.
Sound is manipulated throughout the film, both in the everyday and the supernatural realms. The apartment’s door phone plays the same classical tone each time, illustrating how smoothly Noise transitions from the familiar to the fantastical. It acts both as a trigger for impending dread and a marker that this malevolent force infiltrates all aspects of Joo-young’s crumbling world.
Lee Sun-bin’s nuanced portrayal of a woman tortured by survivor’s guilt on multiple levels is a blend of sweetness and determination that fosters empathy for the underdog. She is used to the discrimination her diminished hearing generates, but shows a gutsy stoicism in the face of unknown terrors and police nonchalance.
Noise underplays the apparent group psychosis festering within the apartment block, and this proves a little frustrating. It makes for several disturbing scenes, and it’s a fascinating subplot, but it’s never fully explained. However, the core mystery is wrapped up smartly with unpredictable reveals that land soundly.
Crowded living conditions, antisocial behaviour and property paranoia are perfect breeding grounds for evil entities to thrive, and Noise makes full use of this. The film attempts to balance its relentless scare tactics with social commentary and emotional weight, but the overwhelming tide of terror ultimately consumes them. By the time Kim Soo-jin unleashes found-footage stratagems into the mix, the audience is already a nervous wreck.
Clever, neurotic, and above all, scary, Noise might make you think twice before banging a broom handle on the ceiling to admonish a rowdy neighbour.
★★★★
North American premiere at Fantasia on the 17th July 2025 / Lee Sun-bin, Kim Min-seok, Ryu Kyung-soo / Dir: Kim Soo-jin / Finecut Co., Ltd
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