Based on the Korean folk tale, ‘Janghwa and Hongryun’ (Rose and Lotus), ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ is a first class piece of Asian horror. Although there are clues throughout the film to the twists at the end, such clues are more subtle than they might be in a Western film. While some films fall down on second or third viewings, this one, if anything, reveals more. The pieces of the jigsaw come together. But not completely. Because this is a film with an interior. The story, the film, the characters, the scenes, have depths that can be explored.

The film opens on a cold white room where a doctor attempts to interview a faceless young girl or woman. Her black hair covers her face, calling to mind Sadako in ‘Ring.’ The psychiatrist wants her to recall the events of “that day.” The scene shifts to a shot of beautiful countryside passing by through a car window. The car arrives at a house near a lake or reservoir. An older man greets the occupants, before returning to the house. Two teenage girls get out. This section of the film is sunny and bright. Su-yeon, the younger, goes to pick ground cherries while the older girl, Su-mi, watches. When they finally enter the house, the dark gothic atmosphere of the rest of the film takes over. They’re met in a shadowy corridor by their beautiful stepmother, an ambiguous character the girls are clearly frightened of. Up in her bedroom, Su-mi takes her diary out from her bag only to find an identical one in her desk. There’s also a row of identical skirts and blouses in her wardrobe. The clock on the wall has stopped. The girls have been away. The assumption is that they’ve been in an institution of some kind.

There are four people living in the house: the father, the stepmother, and the two girls. There’s also a ghostly presence, which haunts the younger girl in particular, opening her door at night, and hiding in the closet. Su-mi also has a terrifying vision of the ghost, a woman whose face is mostly hidden by her long black hair. As time goes on, the two girls are increasingly terrorised, and the stepmother too appears to be losing her mind. In the earlier part of the film, the stepmother sometimes seems like a woman desperate to get her new family back on track, but as things progress, she becomes an increasingly malevolent figure. The girls’ true mother hung herself, but she’s still a presence in the house. The house itself is a threatening place. The wallpaper is bizarrely flower-patterned. As the film progresses, these flower backgrounds become more and more ominous and claustrophobic. In fact, this is a film which has had a lot of thought put into its design. Visually, it’s extremely well put together. Lighting is a major factor in atmosphere, and there’s a commentary available on the DVD from the lighting director and the cinematographer which explains their choice of techniques, including the different lenses used to shoot different characters.

If there are four people in the house, it becomes obvious, some time into the film, that not all these people are relating to one another. Some don’t even appear in the same frames. There’s a very good reason for this, but to find it out, it’s necessary to watch the film. ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ has some extremely poignant moments, and there’s a memorable signature theme, which often plays as a waltz. This contrast between sad melody and horror story gives the film more depth. The relationship between the two sisters is loving and close. The film’s emotional content packs such a punch that the later twists have more impact. But there are also moments of humour, particularly in a dinner party scene when the stepmother is recalling humorous stories from her past. Her husband, her brother and his wife listen in awkward silence as she tries harder and harder to be the life of the party. Her stories are genuinely funny, but the dark undercurrent of the film is still there, and the scene ends in one of the film’s scarier moments. In fact, this is the only time in the film when an outside party sees “something” in the house, adding to the film’s complexity, because the story unfolds in the disturbed mind of one of the house’s four inhabitants. The fact that someone else sees something indicates that there is more going on. The supernatural cannot be dismissed.

Guilt lies at the heart of this tale. Three of the people in the house are struck down with guilt, but they handle it in different ways. The father, a weak and passive character, hovers on the edges, leaving the main drama to the three women and the presence in the house. The closet in Su-yeon’s room becomes a key location, and the sight of more than one horrific moment. Su-mi is not supposed to talk about the closet, according to their father. This is a closet that is metaphorical as well as literal. But it’s not a skeleton that lurks in there. There are also images that are never fully explained. When the stepmother’s brother and his wife are driving along on their way to the house for dinner, the car headlights light up the road ahead, and we see, briefly, something that almost looks like a large covered bundle or small tent sitting on the road. It’s this kind of thing that cranks up the mystery that covers this film like a mist. But it is possible to penetrate that mist. The end section and the epilogue go some way to leading the audience in the right direction. In fact, a series of flashing images, seen previously, but which only make sense at the end, bring to mind a similar montage in Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Don’t Look Now.’ But this time, it’s not a foretelling of the future that’s coming to pass, but a brief, nightmarish sequence that is revealed to be the true past.

‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ is one of the best horror films to come out of Asia in recent years. There’s more emotional content than in ‘Ring,’ ‘Audition,’ ‘The Eye,’ or many of the region’s other successful films. It’s also a more complicated film both in plot and structure. As with ‘Ring,’ Hollywood has marked the film out for a remake. It’s unlikely that the complexities of the original South Korean version will remain. There’s the hint of an Electra complex in one of the characters which may well be dropped. When the Norwegian thriller, ‘Insomnia,’ was remade, the darker elements of the character Pacino would play were eliminated. ‘The Ring,’ meanwhile, completely dispensed with the original Japanese version’s successful formula of keeping the demon-child’s face hidden behind a curtain of black hair. In the US remake, she talked, she showed her face, and thus lost all of the power of the original film’s Sadako. There’s a good chance that a similar fate will befall ‘A Tale of Two Sisters.’ Hollywood’s fondness for special effects did ‘The Ring’ no favours. Since the rights to the Korean film have been bought by Spielberg’s DreamWorks company, there’s the great danger of special effects prevailing over mystery and open-endedness. If you want to see the definitive version, get the Korean original before the remake comes out. The 2-disc DVD comes packed with extras.