After-School Exorcism Club: Girls' Night

Where does the lineage of school horror that began with Whispering Corridors in 1998 stand today? If Kim Min-ha, director of Idiot Girls and School Ghost: School Anniversar (2024) and Teaching Practice: Idiot Girls and School Ghost 2 (2025), can be seen as one of its recent heirs, then After-school Exorcism Club: Girls’ Night offers another attempt to carry that lineage forward. Originally made in the vertical format of short-form cinema and re-edited for a horizontal frame, the film features the five members of the girl group FIFTY FIFTY as its central characters and follows them as they perform exorcisms. A school built over graves, a student who always comes in second, a spirit bound to the school and unable to leave—these are the familiar clichés of school horror that make up the film. And yet, rather than following the atmosphere of a conventional horror film, it maintains a bright and lively tone throughout. The animated sequences inserted along the way are also striking. The film makes full use of the FIFTY FIFTY members’ public images and personalities, shaping them into cinematic characters, and the result feels surprisingly natural.(KIM Hyung-seok)