Exist Within is a Korean crime thriller that feels like a horror film at first, but as the narrative moves forward, you realize that real horror isn’t about ghosts or spirits but it’s actually about the darkness that we all have inside us. Kim Jung Wook’s film focuses on a young woman named Eun-su, who is desperate to win a screenplay competition, because she thinks the prize money would help her pay off bills and relieve her family’s burdens. But no matter how hard Eun-su tries, she fails to win the money. Why? The constant noise from the apartment above her distracts Eun-su as the never-ending thudding breaks her focus, and even when she bangs on her ceiling to make it stop, it always comes back. So, Eun-su starts to suspect that something is wrong with her upstairs neighbor, Jung Ho-kyung. The question here: will Eun-su be able to use this strange situation and turn it into the perfect story for her screenplay? Eun-su’s journey may just lead her to discover something that can send chills down her spine, but let me tell you, it was not what Eun-su had expected.
Spoilers Ahead
What kind of a man was Jung Ho-kyung?
We’ve often seen how having faith in religion without questioning it, can be dangerous. Cults are a clear example of this, where so-called spiritual leaders fill people’s minds with ideas that push them to extremes; even celebrities and scientists have fallen victim to these beliefs, and this is exactly what happened to Jung Ho-Kyung when he started attending a church called the “Paradise of Heaven and Earth.” The followers in this place were given “holy water” which was just water mixed with mint, and all believed that if they drank it or bathed in it then their pain and suffering would be washed away. Also, the leaders would make them cry out in pain and claim it was part of becoming “clean” and free from sin. This is not all, because in this cult, fish were seen as sacred, and those labeled as “sinners” had to feed the fish to earn forgiveness, prosperity, and relief from their suffering. Jung Ho-kyung was a desperate father, who started going there because his daughter was very sick and in the hospital. He was just trying to find a way to help her and hoped that following the cult’s order would heal her. But little did Jung Ho-kyung know that this cult was fake, until one night, the cult’s spiritual leader came to visit Jung Ho-Kyung and admitted that the whole thing was a lie as they brainwashed people, and the rituals didn’t actually take away any pain or suffering—it was all just a myth. This shattered Jung Ho-kyung’s faith and in a fit of rage and feeling helpless and angry over not having a cure for his daughter’s condition, he started thudding the leader’s head against the floor and smashed it in. This was the very sound that Eun-su heard coming from her upstairs apartment. But the tragedy didn’t end there, because Jung Ho-kyung’s anger, frustration, and despair only grew, so anyone who he thought was betraying him or opposing him—those he saw as sinners—would be killed by him, he’d either use some poisonous gas or beat them until they could no longer fight back. Then, he would store their bodies under large slabs of ice in his apartment to freeze them to prevent decay, and you know what even worse is that Jung Ho-kyung would go fishing and make offering to fish of the frozen fingers or flesh as the fish symbolizes spirituality and it would look like some odd offering to his god. So it is ironic how he was completely brainwashed and believed that this was the only way to heal his daughter and gain redemption. But Jung Ho-kyung didn’t realize that while he thought he was doing something good, he was only becoming a bigger sinner himself. His daughter wasn’t getting better because of this—she needed proper medical treatment, not superstition.
Did Eun-su finally get hold of Jung Ho-kyung?
As I mentioned, all the noise from the upstairs apartment was driving Eun-su crazy, but something even stranger happened—she noticed the ceiling in her apartment was starting to get damp from water leaking down, which wasn’t there before. That’s when Eun-su found out something suspicious: the man living upstairs was supposed to be someone named Lee Kwang-hwan, but instead, a man named Jung Ho-kyung was living there.
At this point, Eun-Su was quite certain that something was really wrong, and therefore she asked her classmate Ji-sung for help to dig up the truth. Together, Eun-Su and Ji-sung started a secret investigation to find more about Jung Ho-kyung. Eun-Su even sneaked into his car to find out what he was up to, but she got caught and was taken to the police. Still, while Eun-su was in his car, she noticed bottles of mint-flavored water that looked very suspicious. So, Eun-su put a tracker on his car and followed him, which led her to find out that Jung Ho-kyung had a sick daughter who was in the hospital. Now you could think that he was just a helpless father, but Eun-su had her doubts, so she naturally wanted to dig deeper.
From some flyers Eun-su found in Ho-kyung’s door, she discovered the cult the man was involved with. So, Eun-su decided to visit the church herself, and that’s when she learned about the disturbing rituals and started to realize that Jung Ho-kyung might be a victim of this awful cult. However, Jung Ho-kyung had already started to suspect that Eun-su and Ji-sung were onto him when he found the tracker planted in his car. Hence to take revenge he decided to lure them into a trap and led them to a fishing lake because he knew they would follow. At one point, Ji-sung got too close, and Jung Ho-kyung knocked him out cold on the pavement. Eun-su didn’t realize this at first, but when she couldn’t get in touch with Ji-sung, she began to worry. Eun-s called Ji-sung repeatedly, but it was Jung Ho-kyung who finally picked up the phone. Eun-su begged him, saying she knew about his crimes and his killing spree, but promised not to tell the police if he just left Ji-sung alone. Jung Ho-Kyung didn’t kill Ji-sung—because his real target was Eun-su. She rushed Ji-sung to the hospital and immediately called the police and then headed straight for Jung Ho-kyung’s apartment, but when she got there, the door was locked as Jung Ho-kyung had already locked him inside to clean up the mess in his apartment—piles of dead bodies that he had stored in secret. But Eun-su was determined to catch him red-handed, and for that, she climbed up to his apartment balcony to sneak inside. When she saw the dead bodies frozen under ice, it horrified her, but before she could take it all in, Jung Ho-kyung emerged from his hiding place to kill her because he still believed that killing Eun-su was the “right path”—that he was being guided by some divine force. Just as he was about to attack her, the police broke down the door and arrested him. It turned out that the “heavenly father” Jung Ho-kyung thought was guiding him couldn’t save him after all.
In Exist Within’s ending, Jung Ho-kyung’s daughter finally got the surgery she needed and started getting better, so it turned out she didn’t need her father’s “heavenly father” or any of that cult nonsense to save her after all. Because of everything that happened, the cult, “Paradise of Heaven and Earth,” was shut down for good, which was a huge relief. Both Ji-sung and Eun-su made it back home safely, but the things that Eun-su saw in that apartment didn’t leave her mind so easily. But maybe now, with this real-life experience, Eun-su can finally write the screenplay she’s been struggling with. After all, this isn’t just a story Eun-su made up—this is something she lived through and knows by heart, so maybe that will help her win the competition after all.
