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Memento Mori movie poster

Memento Mori is a 1999 South Korean horror film, and the second installment of the Whispering Corridors film series. It is a sequel to 1998's Whispering Corridors, and is also set in an all-girls high school, but the films are otherwise unrelated. Memento Mori was one of the first Korean commercial films to depict lesbian characters. However, prevailing Korean attitudes constrained its potential to be widely viewed, even more so as the controversial themes targeted the teen demographic.

Plot[]

The film revolves around the relationship between two high school students, Yoo Shi-eun (Lee Young-jin) and Min Hyo-shin (Park Ye-jin). As the two girls become romantically involved, their taboo relationship causes them to be marginalized by the other students. Unable to cope with the social pressures of having a lover of the same gender, Shi-Eun tries to distance herself from the increasingly dependent Hyo-shin. Hyo-shin reacts poorly to Shi-eun's changed attitude, viewing it as both a betrayal and rejection. Hyo-shin consequently commits suicide by jumping off of the school roof. It is also heavily implied that she was pregnant at the time of death, the father being literature teacher Mr. Goh.

The plot unfurls in a nonlinear fashion, often from the perspective of fellow student Soh Min-ah (Kim Min-sun). Min-ah grows increasingly invested in Shi-eun and Hyo-shin when she finds a diary kept between the two alienated girls. This diary allows her disturbing insights to the nature of the relationship and pulls her deeper into a strange chain of events around the school. After Hyo-shin's death, supernatural occurrences start to terrorize all of the students that condemned the relationship. It is later revealed that Hyo-shin's spirit is malevolently haunting the school through the remnants she left behind in the diary.

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