Wishing Stairs

Title - Wishing Stairs (Ghost School 3, Whispering Corridors 3)
Language - Korean
Genre - Ghost, horror

Wishing Stairs is the third film in the ghost school.  This time around it focuses on the pupils of a ballet class. The film follows 3 students:

So-Hee, who is the top dancer but who has been pushed into dancing by her mother who is, it is hinted, living through her.  

Jin-Sung is So-Hee’s close friend, possibly her girlfriend, her dancing is not seen as being as good as So-Hee’s but she is more driven.  

Hae-Ju is the class misfit, she is overweight  and clumsy which leads to her being mocked by most of the class, she spends most of her time in the old art room.

The film really starts with So-hee going to the art room where she finds Hae-Ju. The two girls talk and So-Hee is kind to Hae-Ju, this is something Hae-ju is not used to  and she starts to develop a crush on So-Hee.  Hae-Ju starts to become fed up with the insults and wants So-Hee to pay her more attention, desperate she decides to see if the urban legend is true.  The legend states that, if you climb the  old stairs that lead up to the dormitories and you have a strong enough desire in your heart a new step will appear, if you stand on the step it will grant your wish.

After standing on the 29th step Hae-Ju wishes to be thin and, over the next few days she begins to lose weight although her appetite seems to increase.  Whilst this is going on as a side story the main part of the film concentrates on So-Hee and Jin-Sung.  During the class it is announced that there is to be a dance contest where each school can enter students and the winner will be granted a place at a high ranking Russian Ballet school.  The school can only afford to enter one student and so has it’s own competition to see who will be sent altho all the teachers and students know that it will be So-Hee.  So-Hee is not interested in the competition but she is being pushed into it  by the teachers and her mom.

jin-Sung on the other hand wants to win but she is also of the assumption that So-Hee is going to get the prize, this assumption is made worse when she overhears one of the teachers talking to So-Hee and telling her that shes all but won.

After seeing that the Wishing step had worked for Hae-Ju, Jin-Sung use’s it, wishing that she will be the one to go to Russia.  The day of the school competition Jin-Sung puts glass in So-Hee’s shoes but So-Hee still wins the competition.  Jin-Sung and So-Hee get into an argument which ends when So-Hee accidentally gets knocked down a  flight of stairs, injuring her and opening up her pace in the  main competition for Jin-Sung.  Soo-Hee dies in hospital but Jin-Sung is interested in winning the competition to pay much attention, this turns the rest of the class against her as they blame her for So-Hee’s death.

By this time Hae-Ju’s infatuation with So-Hee has reached a high level due to the students still mocking her about the amount she eats. Hae-Ju returns to the   wishing step and asks for So-Hee to be returned to her.  So-Hee’s spirit returns and uses Hae-Ju to help her get back at Jin-Sung.

The main focus of ‘Wishing Step’ is ambition and the effect it has on the people around you.  although it’s only mentioned So-Hee’s life is being pushed in a direction she really doesn’t want to go firstly by her mother who is trying to achieve her life's goals by living through So-hee’s success and then by her teachers who are pushing her towards the competition and the Russian school when So-Hee is not really that interested a point that is pushed forward when she tells Jin-Sung that the thing she wants more than anything is just to be with her.

Jin-Sung is the one with all the ambition, her skill in the dancing may not be quite as good as So-Hee’s but she has the drive.  Her drive is further pushed by the treatment So-Hee gets by the teachers who seem to giver her special treatment and this blinds Jin-Sung to So-Hee’s true feelings both towards the dancing ad to Jin-Sung.  The blindness leads to jealousy which leads to Jin-Sung not only try to cheat by putting glass in So-Hee’s shoes but to also make the wish which resulted in So-Hee’s death.

Hae-Ju’s ambition is  not academic.  She wants to be accepted even if it is only by one person and this is why she becomes fixated on So-Hee once she has been kind to her once.  It is not that there was any fixation or attraction to So-Hee before any of this started  but the one act of kindness played on Hae-Ju’s mind and developed into something a lot stronger.  When everyone believed that Jin-Sung had killed So-Hee to get her place in the competition Hae-Ju saw it as even more of a problem, So-Hee had shown Jin-Sung the attention that Hae-Ju had wanted and had rejected it which had then pushed Hae-Ju over the edge.

It is also not obvious if the step has any actual power.  Hae-Ju does lose wait but we see that she is carrying pills around with her  and her attempts to hide them show that they may be diet pills and it may be these coupled with Hae-Ju being sick after eating that may have led to the weight loss.

Jin-Sung only gets through to the main competition because So-Hee fell down the stairs and she got the place in Russia because she is a good dancer, So-Hee fell down the stairs as an accident brought on by Jin-Sung’s jealousy and all of this would probably have happened even if Jin-Sung had not made the wish.

this leaves the ghost, So-Hee’s ghost was around before Hae-Ju made the wish, we know this because she visited Jin-Sung the night she died.  For most of the ghost’s interaction with Hae-Ju we don’t see So-Hee and when we do only Hae-Ju sees it.  what we do see is the ghost in the mirror talking Hae-Ju into making herself look more like So-Hee (a process that may already have started when Hae-Ju had started to lose weight) and then we see Hae-Ju switch between being Hae-Ju and So-Hee.  This could be down to either So-Hee possessing Hae-Ju which is what Hae-Ju believes or it could be that Hae-Ju is having a break down.  Whatever the case it is evident that So-Hee is still not interested in Hae-Ju as her actions are all directed at getting Jin-Sung to stay with her.

Out of the three ‘ghost School’ films that gone so far Wishing Stairs is the one that most (western) people would recognize as a ghost film, whispering corridor has more of a slasher feel to it and Memento Mori is more of a psychological film. the film plays on this fact most people who see it will know it’s a ghost film and may be waiting for the jumps.  In one scene So-Hee climbs in through Jin-Sungs window unexpectedly and the set shows her as many J-Horror ghosts are shown, only to see that So-Hee is alive and well.  This scene is mimicked later in the film when So- Hee is dead.

Wishing Stairs, like the other films in the series takes it’s time into building up to the ghost and the horror, spending a lot of time on  developing the characters and, like the previous two films it’s worth staying with as it seems to be the best so far.  It does not have the confusion of Memento Mori and is more of a ghost film than whispering corridor.