''Suddenly at Midnight'' (; also known as ''Suddenly in the Dark'' or ''Suddenly in Dark Night'') is a 1981 South Korean erotic horror thriller film directed by Ko Young-nam.

Plot

Kang Yu-jin, a wealthy biology professor doing a butterfly field study, takes in a new housemaid; the young woman, Mi-ok, is the daughter of a shaman priestess who recently died in a house fire. At first, Yu-jin and his wife, Seon-hee, welcome Mi-ok into their home, but Seon-hee begins to have misgivings when she sees a strange wooden doll that the maid has brought with her. Having suffered from nightmares about exactly the same doll, Seon-hee becomes increasingly suspicious and paranoid that Mi-ok is trying to kill her and usurp her household. In a sudden fit of madness, Seon-hee causes Mi-ok to fall to her death. From then on, Seon-hee is tormented horribly by visions of the doll attacking her and it starts to take a great toll on her sanity. Is it actually happening or just all in the girl's mind?

Cast

Kim Young-ae Kim Young-ae (; 21 April 1951 – 9 April 2017) was a South Korean actress. Career Kim Young-ae began her acting career when she joined MBC's 3rd Open Recruitment in 1971. She made her acting debut in the TV police procedural ''Chief Inspe ...

... Seon-hee * Yoon Il-bong ... Kang Yu-jin * Lee Ki-seon ... Mi-ok * Hyun Hye-ri * Kim Geun-hie * Kim Min-gyu * Kim Gi-jong * Lee Yae-sung * Gwak Geon * Yoo Myeong-sun

Release

''Suddenly at Midnight'' was released in South Korea on 17 July 1981, and received a total of 28,178 admissions.Paquet, Darcy.
Suddenly At Midnight (1981)
. ''Koreanfilm.org''. Retrieved on 19 April 2009. It was then subsequently released on Blu-ray for the first time ever worldwide in early 2017 by Mondo Macabro.

Critical response

The movie and Ko Young-nam are referred to as a classic work and director of Korean horror film. In a review for ''Koreanfilm.org'', Darcy Paquet cited ''Suddenly at Midnight'' as a rare example of 1970s-80s

Korean horror Korean horror films have been around since the early years of Korean cinema, however, it was not until the late 1990s that the genre began to experience a renewal. Many of the Korean horror films tend to focus on the suffering and the anguish of c ...

that was genuinely frightening, describing it as "a mysterious psychological study... that beguiles the viewer right up to its bizarre closing image." He praised the film's direction, saying, "Ko has a good feel for how to create tension from precise editing and the patient accumulation of evocative details", and also credited actress

for a "convincing performance as the panicked wife".

References

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External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Suddenly At Midnight 1981 films 1980s Korean-language films South Korean horror films 1981 horror films Erotic horror films