Fantasia 2025 Review: NOISE, Kim Soo-jin's Genre-Hopping Horror/Thriller Shreds Nerves and Eardrums

When her sister goes missing, Ju-young (Lee Sun-bin) leaps in to investigate, but what she discovers is an apartment complex with a sinister history of death and disappearance, and it all seems connected to the mysterious noises that are driving the residents crazy in director Kim Soo-jin’s Noise.

Ju-young and her sister, Ju-hee (Han Soo-a) have a complicated history. Ever since their family was shattered by a deadly accident that took their parents’ lives (and cost Ju-young most of her hearing and caused Ju-hee a debilitating leg injury), Ju-hee has struggled to emotionally recover. They moved in together in an apartment block, but when Ju-young’s job took her away to a corporate dormitory, Ju-hee was left alone to deal with her grief. Then the noises came and ruined her life.

As she became increasingly unhinged in attempting to silence the sounds – which no one else heard or could explain – Ju-hee began to document her quest, leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs for Ju-young to follow when she ultimately disappeared. Upon her arrival back at the apartment to look for her sister, Ju-young began experiencing similar noises, along with very aggressive neighbors demanding that she keep the noise down. Before long Ju-young realizes that the entire block is consumed by these noises, and that there’s something the president of the apartment association isn’t telling her, and it may be what leads her to her sister.

Noise is a nerve-shredding – and ear-splitting – experience in terror. Director Kim throws about a million balls in the air at the beginning of the film and expects the viewer to juggle them for the entire run time of the film. Not going to lie, it is a bit of a challenge. Between navigating the effects of Ju-young’s hearing challenges, the mysterious noises, the ghostly entities, the borderline psychotic apartment association president, Ju-hee’s boyfriend, ineffectual police, and an extended climax that seems to consume the entire third act, Noise is a whole lot of movie packed into a tight ninety-five minutes.

A lot of Noise feels like the usual first-feature-itis, the urge to throw as many ideas as possible into a film in the fear that you may never get a chance to make another. Kim Soo-jin’s direction in solid within scenes, his characters are confidently themselves, the actors know exactly what tone they are working toward, but the narrative itself is a bit scattered, especially when it comes to the revelations that come toward the end of the film. Noise wants to have its cake and eat it too, complicating its conclusion with thriller and horror elements that don’t always work well together, despite the effectiveness of the individual elements.

As an audio-visual experience, Noise is an undeniable success. With a title like that, the film puts a lot of pressure on the soundtrack and especially the sound design to deliver, and they certainly come through. Noise is packed from stem to stern with pummeling sound design that convincingly puts the audience into the same headspace as the film’s increasingly unstable protagonist. As Ju-young begins to lose touch with reality while these noises consume her life and the lives of those around her, so does the viewer. We become untethered from the reality of the situation, unable to focus on what is happening in front of us as the sounds become more and more aggressive.

Kim Soo-jin has a winner on his hands here, Noise is an anxiety inducing supernatural mystery with quality jump scares aplenty and a solid cast. There is definitely an issue with a scattered narrative focus that could be solved by a bit less genre hopping, but it is a minor quibble in a film that is this confidently executed. Another Fantasia 2025 banger in the books