I have only seen the first movie in the "Wishing Stairs" franchise, so I can't really claim to know whether or not there is a continuity throughout the movies, or whether or not you need to watch the movies chronologically in order to get more out of the movies. But I do believe that they serve as stand-alone movies as well. And with that impression I sat down to watch "Wishing Stairs 4: Voice" (aka "Yeogo goedam 4: Moksori").Well, actually since this is a South Korean horror movie, then I needed absolutely no convincing in order to sit down to invest 1 hour and 44 minutes of watching the movie from writer Joon-Seok Sol and writer/director Equan Choi. The movie does start out quite well and does not waste any time in having to go through a prolonged time of establishing the story, character development and having to build up the atmosphere of the movie. No, "Wishing Stairs 4: Voice" just starts out with the good stuff, so to speak, right from the very beginning. And that set the movie for an intense start. However, the air quickly deflated from the balloon, so to speak, and the movie lost momentum as the storyline settled into a slow, monotonous pace as the befuddled story unfolded on the screen.And it was a nice change of the usual approach that Asian movies take on ghost stories; you know, the one where the ghost is a woman in a white dress and having her black hair covering her entire face. This movie, luckily, didn't fall into that stereotypical niché, and that made for a refreshing approach. In fact, the movie would have been comical in a sense if they had opted for that particular type of ghost for this movie. However, it would have been that much better if they had ensured that the ghost didn't cast a shadow whenever there was light on it; it would have added that much more sense of supernatural to it instead of it just being a regular girl portraying a ghost.Storywise, then "Wishing Stairs 4: Voice" seems a bit flimsily and seems to want to focus on a bit too many things, which means that the prime focus of the movie sort of becomes blurry along the way. Focus and detail get lost and the movie does suffer a bit from that, especially because it is a bit difficult to keep track of what it is that director Equan Choi is trying to portray and accomplish with the various things."Wishing Stairs 4: Voice" is listed as a horror movie, but you actually have to look long and hard to find anything scary about the movie. I would say that the movie better qualifies as a supernatural thriller more than it does as a horror movie.The two leading actresses OK-bin Kim (playing Young-eon) and Ji-hye Seo (playing Seon-min) were quite nicely cast for their roles in this movie, and they carried the movie quite well with their performances. Actually everyone on the cast list was doing well in the movie, which was a great for the overall result of the movie.The music score for the movie was actually quite good, with lots of fitting and atmospheric music that complimented the movie in a very good way.I will say that there are so nice visual effects in the movie, and the special effects do serve their purposes quite well in furthering the story and bringing it to life on the screen. The elevator scene was rather interesting, nicely constructed and filmed, but it felt rather anti-climatic.The lack of scares and horror element and a somewhat befuddled storyline caused the movie to suffer, and the movie wasn't allowed to become all that it could have been. As such, it ends up as a rather mediocre movie. And I must also admit that once the initial thrilling and well-paced start of the movie was over, and the story settled into a monotonous pace, then it was hard to keep focus on the movie and it was progressively difficult to maintain an interest in the movie. But I stuck with it, hoping that the movie would pick up pace and become more interesting.My rating of "Wishing Stairs 4: Voice" ends on a flat 5 out of 10 stars.

Thing that I can appreciate about this movie series is that it keeps reinventing itself with each movie. Even though the main premise always remains the same, they still manage to come up with new fresh takes on it.This movie is perhaps the most original one of its series, when it comes down to its approach but at the same time I also really wouldn't want to call it the best one of the its series.The thing that makes this movie original is its approach. Instead of being a typical ghost story, it tries to be a more emotionally involving one, by actually telling large part of the story from the viewpoint of an actual ghost. So people who are expecting an horror, with all of the thrills and scares that go along with this, will perhaps feel cheated and disappointed by this movie but those who want something 'different' for a change will surely be able to appreciate this.But the movie itself is only half good really. So yes, it has an original approach to its genre but it is only able to do so much with it. The movie runs out of steam about halfway through and when the movie picks up pace again the story suddenly becomes needlessly complicated and hard to follow, which is also a bit in contrast with the rest of the movie.Other than that this movie is one fine and originally done genre movie, that never becomes truly bad but in the end also never really stands out in any way, despite its original approach.6/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

The fourth in a series of South Korean ghost films, all of them set within haunted schools for girls. Like some of the previous instalments, most of the focus on this one is on drama rather than horror, although there are a handful of RING-inspired shock sequences along the way to appease the fans.This is quite an unwieldy movie that delivers little you'd expect. Once it settles into gear, it feels a bit like an Asian version of GHOST as the spirit of a murdered schoolgirl attempts to figure out the reasons behind her death. Things get stranger as they go on, with the usual bouts of teen hysteria, lesbianism and bratty students. The cast are solid but the direction competent rather than decent, and while this film throws some intriguing slants on the usual ghostly plot lines it's definitely the weakest entry in the series yet.

This movie started out great, albeit coming off as a little derivative in the style of introducing the ghost. But as the movie went on, the story unfolded itself VERY slowly and I was presented with a number of flashbacks that I'm still not sure why they were included in the movie. I was already greatly confused by the story and these flashbacks certainly did not alleviate my confusion. Yet still, the story went on and my little anticipation for the truth gradually diminished. By the time the main character is finally being told of the truth, I had lost all my interest, not to mention the explanation itself made very little sense. On top of all this, the ambiguous ending was very unsatisfying to me after having sat through this mildly-interesting bore-fest.I understand some movies are meant to be ambiguously good so that the viewers can interpret everything themselves. This movie is not one of them.