Retro Horror Review: ‘Antarctic Journal’ is a Descent into Madness with Arctic Ghosts

The 2005 film South Korean film Antarctic Journal from director Yim Pil-Sung is now streaming for free on TubiTv. Spoilers Ahead!!!

There is a certain aesthetic when it comes to horror stories set in the snow. For me, it’s the stark white canvas in which viscera and gore are painted that gives it that extra flourish. Classics like The Thing and The Shining wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if they were set during the summer months. Even more recently 30 Days of Night, Adam Green’s Frozen and Let the Right One In wouldn’t have had quite the same dread and isolated feel without the backdrop of a snow-covered landscape. It’s the idea that the environment can kill you just as quickly as anything hiding in it, makes it an effective setting for horror.

Antarctic Journal’s director Yim Pil-Sung (Hansel & Gretel) and co-writers Bong June Ho (Parasite, The Host, Snowpiercer) and Hae-jun Lee really captured that feeling of insignificance and solitude. Setting this narrative in the vast lifeless environment of Antarctica, we can feel how unforgiving the land is and how its rife with obstacles and dangers.

There is a ticking clock element too that adds to the suspense. There are enough rations for a set duration of travel days, and the 6 months of sunlight they’ve enjoyed will be ending soon plunging them into 6 months of darkness. In good spirits and making their schedule, they set off on their journey, that is until the discovery of a buried journal from a British expedition 80 years prior casts a shadow on their trek. 

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Leading this exploration team of 6 is Choe Do-hyung (Song Kang-Ho: Parasite, The Host) who wants to reach the “Point of Inaccessibility” in Antarctica, one of the world’s most inaccessible places. His team consists of Young Min (Park Hee-Soon) the navigator, the cook Geun-Chan (Kim Kyung-ik), a communications expert Kim Sung-hoon (Je-mun Yun), an electronics specialist Jae-Kyung (Choi Deok-moon) and Min-Jae (Yoo Ji-tae) who is treated like a son by Choe.

The professionalism and efficiency of the group when working as a team is quickly realized when one of them slips into a hidden crevice but is rescued without incident. This group of explorers are well prepared for the journey ahead, but will it be enough?

What I love about the first half of Antarctic Journal is the creeping sense that the further they go into the unknown, the more bizarre things start happening, but in a “did I just see…” kind of notion. A mysterious white figure that is only visible through lens of a camera. A parasite is awoken as the snow is melted down to drink. Are these entities causing the rising tension between the explorers or is it something deeper?

Antarctic Journal has so much going on in such a subtle way that you begin to feel uneasy. The more they read into the journal and fixate on the drawings they begin to draw parallels to their own journey. However that idea quickly sours when the frozen body of one of the 1922 British team is found and one of them goes missing.

While Antarctic Journal begins with elements of a supernatural or parasitic horror sub-genre, the latter half abandons those notions and is much more of an exploration of psychological drama with horror elements. It becomes a character study on obsessions, unresolved grief, madness and physical and mental exhaustion. Loss of time and direction and the sabotage of equipment from within the group all fuel the eventual mental break downs. The filmmaker plays with dream sequences, visual misinformation and tricks to really play with your mind as a viewer.

The claustrophobic nature of these men in a confined tent, the dwindling ration supply, a sea of white surrounding them and the beginnings of madness in their captain to finish the journey no matter what the cost, really gave me that vibe of a metaphoric Moby Dick tale.  But there is no whale this time, just a need for a destination and to be welcomed somewhere.

While I can see the frustration of setting up a potential ghost story or monster tale and then completely going in a different direction, I can also appreciate what we did get. I see it as a study into survival, limits of the mind and body and running from guilt, set in the most brutal of environments and what that does to a man’s psyche. All around superb performances by the small cast, most of whom came from the theater.

The scenes inside the tent feel like they could have been performed on a stage. There are some more traditional horror elements here for sure, and there will be blood, but if you’re a fan of the slow burn, visually striking more psychological elements of the genre then I think you’ll really find Antarctic Journal quite haunting. 3/5

★★★

You can check out a clip for Antarctic Journal below and the film is is now streaming on TubiTv. Be sure to follow ScaryNerd for more of all things horror, sci-fi and more.

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