A Tale of Two Sisters

Kim Jee-woon takes a centuries-old Joseon folktale about a wicked stepmother and films it as a slow, ravishing domestic nightmare in a house too beautiful to trust. Two sisters come home from a hospital stay to a father who has checked out and a stepmother sharpening her attention on them, and the dread seeps in through wallpaper, dinner tables and things half-seen under the sink rather than through jump scares. It became the highest-grossing Korean horror film ever made and earned the inevitable limp American remake, which exists mainly to make you appreciate this one. The story folds back on itself in a way that irritates people on first watch and floors them on the second. The quiet, patient, heartbreaking end of the Asian Extreme shelf.