Wishing Stairs (DVD)

An old, crumbling cement stairway leading to the dormitory of a remote boarding school usually has 28 steps… but every so often, when a young girl really wishes hard, there appears to be 29. When the hopeful one steps upon the mysterious extra stair, the horror is unleashed.

The third film in the Korean Whispering Corridors series, Wishing Stairs is a tale of greed, haunting, and budding lesbian love set in an all-girls boarding school. Close friends Kim So-hie (Han-byeol Park) and Yun Ji-seong (Ji-hyo Song) both study ballet, but So-hie has all the advantages. When Ji-seong notices an unpopular, unattractive classmate suddenly becoming a pretty, popular girl, she is determined to find out how she, too, can make her wishes come true. The stairs lead the way but for every wish granted, another’s hopes must be dashed — this leads to ruin for Kim So-hie, and Yun Ji-seong must find a way to appease the spirits before her own life is taken.

Like its predecessors in the series, Wishing Stairs is long on atmosphere and short on scares. However, perhaps because it has a female director (Jae-yeon Yun), the adolescent girls are better-drawn and more likeable (there’s also a lot less lesbian fondling going on).

Despite obviously heavy influences from movies like Ringu, Wishing Stairs is not a bad little tale — it does fall apart towards the end as it tumbles ass-over-teakettle into incoherent mumbo-jumbo, but if you’ve seen the first two films you’ll probably like Wishing Stairs (but the second film, Memento Mori, is still the best of the lot as far as the horror elements go).

Review: Whispering Corridors

Review: Memento Mori

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson