Recommended: A Tale of Two Sisters (South Korea, 2003). It's based on a classic Korean folk tale, which has itself been filmed several times (as Janghwa Hongryeonjeon, 1956 and 1972).
The film is complex, thoughtful, and exquisitely paced. While some reviews market it as a surprise ending movie, that really doesn't describe it. Tale begins in mystery, and constructs a familiar modern east Asian horror movie feel via tense spaces, a black-haired female specter, and dialogue falling away from visuals. But the last third is really a sequence of revelations, deeply imbedded in what has gone before, and build into primary interpersonal relationships, rather than impinging on them from outside.
Those relationships are the core of the film, starting from the tension between the titular siblings and their threatening stepmother. They along with the girls' father have assembled at the family house, a gorgeous yet ominous space. The stronger sister, Su-Mi, is caught between powerful guilt fully explained only by the film's last minute, various sexual pulls and an unnerving sense of foreboding - here it's useful to remember the German for uncanny, unheimlich, meaning "un-home-y."
It's a rare film, sidestepping both Hollywood slashers and Ringu-imitators. Go see it.
(thanks to Steve for research goodness)
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