As I sat down in 2023 to watch the 2020 South Korean horror movie "Hotel Leikeu" (aka "Lingering", though I think "Hotel Lake" would have been a more appropriate translation given the name of the hotel in the movie), I had never actually heard about the movie. I stumbled upon it by random luck, and given my fascination with the Asian cinema and horror cinema in general, of course I opted to watch this movie.
Writer and director Yoon Een-Kyoung didn't exactly manage to impress me with the script and storyline for "Hotel Leikeu". It was a somewhat slow paced and rather monotonous storyline, which offered next to nothing in terms of proper horror. There were a couple of attempts at jump scares, but they didn't really play out all that well. And with the scenes that show ghostly visages and such, writer and director Yoon Een-Kyoung leaves much to be desired, because once a ghostly visage is show the scene ends and the story moves on to something else entirely. So there are a lot of questions left with the audience, and a sense of 'why even bother showing that when you're not following up on it?'.
The acting performances in the movie were good, despite the fact that the actresses and actors had very little solid material to work with. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but they definitely managed to put on fair enough performances.
Visually then you're not in for anything grand. There are some special effects throughout the course of the 101 minutes that the movie ran for. But don't get your hopes up for anything impressive or over-the-top.
For a horror movie, and an Asian horror movie at that, then "Hotel Leikeu" was a walk in the park. Nothing scary here actually. And that was somewhat disappointing.
While I now have watched the movie, I doubt I will ever return to watch it a second time, because the storyline just doesn't have all that much appeal or contents. And if you enjoy Asian horror cinema, then there are far more enjoyable horror movies readily available.
My rating of "Hotel Leikeu" lands on a four out of ten stars.
