I just finished watching Kim Soo-jin’s debut feature “Noise,” and I’m still processing the auditory nightmare I just experienced. This Korean horror-thriller doesn’t just use sound as a tool—it weaponizes it, turning the everyday cacophony of apartment living into something genuinely terrifying. But beyond the impressive technical execution, what lingers with me is how the film tackles something deeply relatable: the maddening experience of living in close quarters with neighbors you can hear but never truly know.
The Setup: More Than Just Another Haunted Apartment Story
At its core, “Noise” follows two sisters, Joo-young (Lee Sun-bin) and Joo-hee (Han Su-a), who’ve finally achieved their dream of homeownership—a detail that hits differently when you understand South Korea’s brutal housing crisis. They move into apartment 604 in the aging Samil Apartment complex, a building with a corridor structure that’s old enough to be scheduled for reconstruction. But their fresh start quickly sours when mysterious, unidentifiable noises begin plaguing them.
What makes this premise particularly clever is the protagonist’s hearing impairment. Joo-young relies on hearing aids and a speech recognition app on her phone, which the film uses to bone-chilling effect. There’s a childhood tragedy that left Joo-young deaf and Joo-hee with a permanent limp, adding another layer of trauma to their story. When Joo-hee becomes obsessed with the noises—sounds that no amount of soundproofing can silence—their relationship strains to the breaking point. Joo-young escapes to her work dormitory, only to return when her sister vanishes without a trace.
The Apartment Geography: Untangling the Building’s Layout
Here’s where things got confusing for me too, so let me break down the key locations:
Apartment 604: This is where the sisters live—Joo-hee’s apartment and the epicenter of the mystery. It becomes Joo-young’s investigative base after her sister disappears.
Apartment 504: Directly below 604, this is where Park Geun-bae lives (played by Ryu Kyung-soo). He’s the volatile, knife-wielding neighbor who constantly complains about noise from above and openly threatens Joo-young. The film keeps you guessing whether he’s a red herring or genuinely dangerous.
Apartment 704: This is where the former chairwoman of the residents’ association lived before her mysterious death. It’s directly above 604 and becomes a crucial piece of the puzzle. In one particularly disturbing scene, Joo-young discovers that 704 has speakers connected to both the ceiling and floor, creating a conduit for sound between apartments.
Apartment 804: Home to Jung-in (Jeon Ik-ryung), one of the few sympathetic residents who tries to help Joo-young. She reveals the building’s dark history and becomes a key figure in understanding what’s really happening. However, the twist reveals that the woman from 804 is actually the killer, having murdered both the former chairwoman from 704 and Joo-hee.
The Basement: This derelict space has been used as an illegal garbage dump, and it’s where the horror culminates. The foul-smelling basement becomes a prison and dumping ground for bodies, including the man from 504 (who may have been imprisoned there to die) and ultimately where Joo-young has her final confrontation.
The Social Commentary Layer
What elevates “Noise” beyond typical J-horror territory is its engagement with real social issues plaguing South Korea. The film directly addresses “floor noise” (cheung-gan soeum), a major social problem in Korean high-density housing. Because many apartments use hard flooring and concrete slabs that don’t fully absorb impact sound, even normal household activities become sources of conflict. The Korean Environment Corporation receives tens of thousands of complaints annually, and disputes have sometimes turned violent.
The film also touches on gentrification anxiety—this building is slated for reconstruction, creating tension among residents. There’s xenophobia woven in too, with characters blaming foreigners for problems. The chairwoman tries to prevent rumors from spreading that might interfere with reconstruction plans, showing how economic interests can suppress the truth. It’s a portrait of a community already fractured before the supernatural elements even enter the picture.
Sound Design as Character
If there’s one element that defines “Noise,” it’s the absolutely masterful sound design. Director Kim Soo-jin doesn’t just create jump scares—he builds an oppressive sonic landscape where everyday sounds become menacing. Rhythmic thumping, dragging furniture, mysterious crawling sounds, and indecipherable voices layer together into something that genuinely made me check my own apartment’s walls.
The film’s use of Joo-young’s hearing impairment is brilliant. When she removes her hearing aids, we’re plunged into muffled silence alongside her, which paradoxically amplifies the tension. Her speech recognition app becomes an unreliable narrator, picking up distorted voices and, in one genuinely unsettling moment, filling the screen with repeated “hahahaha”s that suggest something inhuman is contributing to the noise.
There’s one scene that reviewers keep mentioning—an ear-piercing moment that physically makes you recoil. I can confirm: it works. The sound literally became painful, which is a rare achievement in horror cinema.
The Ambiguous Ending: What Really Happened?
This is where the film gets messy, and honestly, I’m still working through it. The climax reveals that the woman from 804—who seemed sympathetic—is actually the murderer. Her motive is tragic: neighbors constantly complained about her daughter’s noise (the very “floor noise” issue the film critiques), so she sent the child outside to play, where a delivery van struck and killed her. Her grief transformed into murderous rage against the building’s residents.
But here’s the devastating twist that left me gut-punched: Joo-hee has been dead the entire time Joo-young was searching for her. The woman from 804 killed Joo-hee early on, possibly even before Joo-young returned to the apartment. Everything after that—all of Joo-young’s interactions with her sister, finding her in the basement, their brief reunion—was a mixture of trauma-induced hallucination, denial, and possibly genuine haunting.
The film confirms this in its final moments. When a new tenant from 704 comes to introduce herself, we see Joo-young apparently living with her sister again, even touching her. But it’s clear to us (and presumably the neighbor) that no one else is there. Joo-young has either broken entirely from reality or has accepted living with her sister’s ghost. She ironically advises the new neighbor to ignore any strange noises—sound advice, considering what noise obsession led to.
During the basement fight, even the killer seems confused when Joo-young insists her sister isn’t dead yet, flinching as if she’s watching someone argue with a ghost. The supernatural elements blend with psychological horror so thoroughly that we can’t be certain what’s real and what’s Joo-young’s fractured perception.
The Questions That Linger
Despite the resolution, several elements remain frustratingly unclear:
- What exactly is the supernatural entity? The film suggests something inhuman lurks in the basement, generating some of the noises, but never fully explains its nature or origin.
- Was the man from 504 always a victim? The film implies the woman from 804 imprisoned him in the basement to die slowly, which would explain his erratic behavior—but this is never definitively confirmed.
- When did Joo-hee actually die? The timeline of her murder versus Joo-young’s investigation remains murky. Was she already dead when Joo-young first returned to the apartment?
- How much of what we saw was real? The film deliberately blurs the line between Joo-young’s subjective experience and objective reality, especially after we learn about her hallucinations.
Technical Brilliance Meets Narrative Overload
Visually, “Noise” is stunning. The cinematography uses muted colors, dim corridors, cluttered spaces, and that grimy basement to create an oppressive atmosphere. The building itself mirrors the emotional decay of its inhabitants. Director Kim Soo-jin, making his feature debut after his short “The Line” was nominated at Cannes, demonstrates confident command of horror mechanics.
But here’s where I agree with critics: the film tries to juggle too many elements. There’s the supernatural horror, the apartment thriller, the investigation procedural, the housing crisis commentary, the gentrification plot, the racism subtext, the family trauma, and multiple character revelations in the final act. At only 93 minutes, it should feel brisk, but instead, it feels overstuffed. New characters appear too late to properly develop, and the ending becomes somewhat predictable despite its ambiguity.
The screenplay, written by Lee Je-hui and Kim Yong-hwan, “dips slightly in quality” in the final act, as one critic put it. The transition from slow-burn investigation to supernatural action isn’t entirely seamless. Some reviewers found the conclusion satisfying; others, like me, were left wanting more clarity while appreciating the emotional devastation.
Performance That Sells the Terror
Lee Sun-bin carries this film with a compelling performance as Joo-young. She convincingly portrays someone navigating hearing loss while being pulled into increasingly surreal circumstances. Her emotional range—from determination to grief to horror to the heartbreaking denial of the ending—anchors the film’s more chaotic elements.
Kim Min-seok as Ki-hoon, Joo-hee’s boyfriend, provides a somewhat aloof presence that works as a contrast. But it’s Ryu Kyung-soo as the threatening neighbor from 504 whose “eerie presence leaves a lasting impression.” He makes you genuinely unsure whether he’s villain, victim, or both.
The J-Horror DNA
“Noise” wears its J-horror influences proudly, evoking films like “Dark Water,” “Pulse,” and even “Ringu.” Like those classics, it uses sound and atmosphere over constant visual scares. It deals with grief, guilt, and unresolved trauma manifesting as supernatural phenomena. And like them, it leaves you with an emotionally haunting ending rather than neat resolution.
But it’s distinctly Korean in its social consciousness. Where J-horror often focused on technology or family curses, “Noise” grounds its horror in contemporary urban issues—housing inequality, noise pollution, community breakdown, and the pressure cooker of high-density living.
Final Thoughts: Imperfect but Unforgettable
“Noise” isn’t a perfect film. Its plotting gets convoluted, its ambitions sometimes exceed its runtime, and that ending will frustrate anyone seeking clear answers. But it’s also one of the most technically accomplished and genuinely unsettling horror films I’ve seen recently. The sound design alone makes it worth experiencing in the best audio setup you can manage.
More than that, it taps into something primal: the fear of living surrounded by strangers in walls too thin, where every sound could be innocuous or threatening. In our increasingly dense urban environments, that’s horror we all understand.
The film asks: What happens when the sounds of daily life become unbearable? What happens when the walls between us amplify our worst impulses? And what happens when grief and guilt create their own kind of noise, one that never stops echoing?
I don’t have all the answers about what happened in that building, and I suspect that’s partly the point. Sometimes horror doesn’t need to explain itself completely. Sometimes it just needs to make you feel the terror of not knowing what’s real, what’s making that sound, and whether the person you’re desperately searching for has been gone the entire time.
“Noise” succeeds at that brilliantly, even if it stumbles along the way.
Rating: 7.5/10
“Noise” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024 and was released in South Korean theaters in June 2025. It has since played at numerous international festivals including Fantasia, Sitges, and the Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival, where it continues to unsettle audiences with its sonic nightmares.
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