‘The Second Child’ review: Lim Soo-jung stars in atmospheric South Korean horror-tinged mystery | Reviews

Dir/scr: Yu Eun-jeong. South Korea. 2025. 101mins

A psychologist and single mom learns the shameful reality behind the dying of her older daughter and her evident reappearance three years later – and the way each these occasions may have a doubtlessly deadly affect on her youthful youngster. Author-director Yu Euon-jeong’s second characteristic, The Second Baby is a partially-realised horror thriller that’s continuously wealthy on environment however skinny on thematic coherence and real frights.

 Carried alongside by robust turns from its solid

Intentionally paced and virtually freed from gory violence, The Second Baby sees Yu – considered one of South Korea’s few feminine filmmakers – taking part in with style expectation the way in which she did in her debut, 2018’s Ghost Stroll, to barely extra standard however equally uneven ends. Comparisons may very well be drawn with the likes of The Slender Man, The Babadook and Kim Jee-won’s A Story Of Two Sisters; significantly as Sisters star Lim Soo-jung seems right here (and in addition serves as a producer). That affiliation with Kim’s Korean wave hit, and the final recognition of style movies, ought to take The Second Baby a good means, significantly with specialty festivals, and a common launch in Asia is a robust chance.

Simply as Ghost Stroll put a inventive spin on style and was underpinned by a revelatory efficiency from Han Hae-in, the much less cryptic and extra accessible The Second Baby can be carried alongside by robust turns from its solid; significantly Park So-yi (Swap) and Yu Na (Darkish Nuns) because the movie’s central sisters. Su-ryeon (Yu Na) and Su-an (Park) are shut as sisters go, significantly given their age hole: Su-ryeon is in center college and Su-an simply 10 years outdated. Sneaking into her room one evening, Su-an asks Su-ryeon to inform her the story of the Shadow, a creature dwelling within the underworld who yearns to be corporeal. The catch is that he wants two kids to assist him, so one can provide up their physique.

The story appears to return true that very same evening, culminating in Su-an making an attempt – and failing – to forestall Su-ryeon from falling to her dying from the roof. When Su-an wakes from a coma three years later (she was discovered on the bottom beside her sister) mum Geum-ok (Lim) is relieved, but in addition burdened about the right way to break the information of Su-ryeon’s dying.

Su-an, who nonetheless thinks she’s 10, readjusts to life as finest she will, catching up on her schooling at cram faculties when she meets Jae-in (Yu once more) – a lifeless ringer for Su-ryeon. They strike up a tenuous friendship though, for her half, Su-an is satisfied that Jae-in will carry her sister again so long as she will lure her to the home the place Su-ryeon died.

Spoilers apart, One among The Second Baby’s modest pleasures comes from watching the ladies and Geum-ok slowly unravel the thriller of a household curse (which is barely opaque) that goes again a number of generations and applies solely to girls. Yu takes her time constructing out the puzzle on the coronary heart of the story and lets Park and Yu Na actually stay within the characters; it’s as a lot a narrative of childhood friendship as the rest.

Finally, nevertheless, The Second Baby solely flirts with its horror trappings, as a substitute rising as a slow-burning meditation on ideas of parenting, inherited trauma and various lives. The three feminine characters continuously marvel if the existence of the underworld means there are higher choices for them, and the story’s solely males are antagonists. But whereas cinematographer Lee Ju-hwan crafts some putting pictures, the concepts with which Yu is wrestling by no means really crystallise.