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Lingering
Movie

Lingering

2020 • Unknown

Woke Score
2
out of 10

Plot

When Yoo-mi seeks out her mother's friend at a hotel to drop off her younger sister, she falls into unexpected mystery and horror.

Overall Series Review

Lingering is a South Korean supernatural horror and mystery film that relies on classic K-horror tropes, focusing on a haunted hotel and deep family secrets. The plot centers on Yoo-mi's reluctant journey to care for her young half-sister, Ji-yoo, following their mother's death. The narrative quickly establishes a mystery tied to the hotel's dark history of murder and missing persons, blending supernatural scares with human tragedy. Yoo-mi's struggle involves overcoming her own trauma to protect the child, ultimately developing a strong, protective bond. The film is primarily driven by an all-female cast and the unraveling of a family secret, with minimal political or social commentary outside of the genre's constraints. It operates as a straight genre piece that is neither innovative nor politically charged.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics1/10

The movie is a South Korean production focusing entirely on Korean characters and their internal family drama, therefore having no Western-style racial politics or forced diversity insertion. The conflict revolves around personal trauma and a ghost mystery, not an intersectional lens.

Oikophobia2/10

The film does not frame its home culture, South Korea, as fundamentally corrupt or racist. The horror stems from a specific location, an old hotel, and the secret crimes and tragedies that happened there. The narrative deconstructs a broken family history, but not the nation or civilization as a whole.

Feminism3/10

The story places women and girls in all central roles, including the protagonist, the child, the caretaker, and the antagonist ghost, while male characters are absent or entirely peripheral. This strongly centers female action and agency. However, the core arc involves the protagonist developing a protective, motherly bond, which counters the anti-natalism trope by celebrating a necessary, familial protective role.

LGBTQ+1/10

There is no presence of alternative sexual ideologies, queer theory, or gender identity themes. The story focuses on a non-romantic, traditional sibling/maternal bond in the context of a fractured, but still traditional, family unit.

Anti-Theism1/10

The movie is a ghost story that utilizes traditional Asian supernatural horror tropes. The conflict involves a supernatural entity and a spiritualist is even called in for help, directly acknowledging a spiritual realm and higher forces. The narrative does not contain hostility toward religion or promote moral relativism; the ghost is motivated by a moral concept of injustice.