SEOUL – Korean folklore has no shortage of ghosts. Spirits latch on to just about everything – mirrors, old wells, empty rooms. But the one that is burrowed deepest into the popular imagination is the water ghost (mulgwishin): a drowned soul that pulls the living under.

So pervasive is the motif that it found its way into the everyday expression “water ghost tactic”, meaning to drag someone into the ditch so he or she suffers alongside you.

Released in South Korea in April and opening in Singapore cinemas on May 7, Salmokji: Whispering Water takes that familiar fear and builds a feature around it.

A street-view filming crew – the kind that shoots street-level imagery for online mapping services – is dispatched to a remote reservoir in South Chungcheong province to reshoot footage marred by strange distortions.

Led by Soo-in (Kim Hye-yoon), the team members find themselves sinking into something they cannot drive away from.

Also starring South Korean actors Lee Jong-won and Kim Jun-han, the movie comes from Showbox, the distributor behind historical drama The King’s Warden (2026) – which turned into a full-blown cultural phenomenon and the highest-grossing South Korean film of all time.

“I wanted audiences to feel like they’re being lured in by a water ghost themselves,” writer-director Lee Sang-min said at a Seoul press conference in March.

The 31-year-old is making his feature debut after cutting his teeth on horror shorts. “That meant being very precise with the road-view shots and how we framed the characters – making it feel like you’re right there with them,” he said.

K-drama star Kim Hye-yoon has been riding high since the tim...