College student Hee-jin returns home after her younger sister, the recent survivor of a devastating car accident, has gone missing, only to find her mother is a fanatical religious convert and an ominous aura hangs over the family's apartment complex. Things take a macabre turn when the neighbors start offing themselves in increasingly bizarre and grotesque ways, and Hee-jin calls on skeptical detective Tae-hwan to investigate the mysterious events. Together they begin to unravel the tangled web of connections between the victims that will ultimately lead back to the missing girl.

Drawing equally from traditions of K-horror and police procedural, Possessed is an eminently creepy hybrid, a slow-burn horror film that builds its eeriness through a paced accumulation of unsettling details within its engrossing mystery plot. Director Lee Yong-ju mobilizes familiar horror imagery in imaginative new ways to craft a pernicious skin-crawler as Hee-jin and Tae-hwan unearth the twisted secrets behind the rash of ghastly deaths.

Lee Yong-ju and Lee Yong-ju