Summer is everywhere. Trees thicken with leaves, and the days stretch long, sometimes ending in skies washed with layered reds and yellows. For children, it is a season of long holidays, their smiles carrying a quiet sense of ease. In Korea, summer has also meant something else: the arrival of horror films—what we often call summer chillers. It is a tradition that predates even the era of the summer blockbuster.
When I was growing up, there was no summer without television horror films—stories drawn from folk tales of goblins (dokkaebi), wandering ghosts, and restless spirits bound to this world by unresolved resentment. Among them, one figure returned again and again: the nine-tailed fox, a being who, through spiritual discipline and accumulated power, could assume human form, if only temporarily.
I remember watching one of these stories late at night. When it was over, I could not bring myself to sleep alone in my room. The fear was not loud, not even entirely visible—it lingered, something I felt more than understood. I was, quite literally, chilled.
That tradition, at some point, seemed to fade. And yet, this summer, with the release of The East Palace (2026), it feels as though something has returned—though I am not entirely sure in what form. Is this a revival of the summer horror film, or something else altogether?
The East Palace is visually striking and carefully structured, juxtaposing the world of the living with the underworld of the dead. Set within the palaces of the Joseon dynasty, the series renders traditional Korean architecture with a painterly sensibility. From the king’s court to the quarters of the court ladies, elements of nature—light, trees, sky, and stone—are woven into the mise-en-scène, at times creating warmth, at others an unsettling atmosphere that lingers beneath the surface.
Gu-cheon, the central figure, is summoned into this seemingly ordered and beautiful world to confront a recurring tragedy within the royal lineage: princes fall ill and die from inexplicable causes. Rumors circulate throughout the palace that demons are at work, orchestrating these deaths. In an effort to preserve the line of succession, the king turns to Gu-cheon, who possesses the rare ability not only to see ghosts and wandering souls but also to traverse the boundary between worlds. Upon his arrival, he discovers that the palace is already saturated with restless spirits—figures bound by unresolved resentment. As he ventures deeper into the underworld, the concealed underside of the palace gradually reveals itself: a domain inhabited and governed by the dead and their demonic counterparts. This parallel realm exists alongside the world of the living, occupied by those who have not yet reached a final state of rest.
Stranger Connections
The world that Gu-cheon enters functions as a distorted mirror of the living palace. Familiar spaces—the forecourt of royal ceremonies, the king’s bedchamber, the East Palace where the princes reside—reappear in altered forms, reminiscent of surrealist landscapes. Structures remain recognizable, yet they are worn, fragmented, and suspended in a state of decay, as though time has abandoned them. It is within this space that lost souls and demons persist, their lingering resentment translating into misfortune for the living.
What emerges here is a logic of return. Actions do not simply disappear; they are displaced, accumulating elsewhere before finding their way back. The boundary between the two worlds is therefore not absolute but permeable. Gu-cheon’s descent into this realm is not only a confrontation with supernatural forces but also an encounter with consequences that refuse to remain buried. His ultimate task—to eliminate the demon prince, once a royal heir destroyed by internal power struggles—suggests that the past continues to exert pressure on the present in ways that are both intimate and structural.
The connection between the two worlds is not one-directional. The estranged princess, for instance, is able to intervene from the realm of the living. In one moment, she throws branches from a jujube tree struck by lightning toward the point where Gu-cheon crosses over; in his hands, they transform into a luminous sword capable of striking down demons. Such moments establish a reciprocal relationship between the two dimensions: fear circulates, but so does the possibility of resistance.
At this point, the structure begins to suggest something more contemporary. The parallel world operates less as a purely mythological space than as a kind of reflective system—one that recalls the architecture of digital environments. Much like the digital sphere, where everyday activities are replicated under different conditions and rules, this underworld mirrors the living realm while transforming its logic. If so, The East Palace may be gesturing—perhaps cautiously—toward a more unsettling idea: that what appears contained or invisible does not disappear, but continues to operate elsewhere with a different intensity. In this sense, the series resonates with other Netflix productions, most notably Stranger Things, where an alternate dimension similarly refracts and distorts the familiar world.
Between Occult and Old Ghost Stories
One thing I noticed while watching The East Palace was that I was not particularly scared. Perhaps my palette for fear has hardened over time. It could also be that the series’ carefully composed cinematography—almost too perfect in its aesthetic balance—leaves little room for uncertainty to take hold. Or perhaps what we find frightening has changed.
The East Palace is, in many ways, a horror text, but it leans toward the occult, where supernatural forces actively intrude upon and terrorize the world of the living. This shift has become increasingly visible in works such as The Wailing (2016) and Exhuma (2024). In particular, Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing marks a decisive turn: it departs from earlier narrative traditions, such as the story of the nine-tailed fox, and establishes a form of horror grounded in irreducible evil.
The difference is telling. The nine-tailed fox is defined by longing—by a desire that can never be fully realized. She seeks to become human, restraining her instincts, cultivating herself through discipline, almost monastically. Yet her trajectory inevitably leads to betrayal, broken promises, and a return to the forest. The boundary between human and non-human ultimately holds. By contrast, The Wailing presents a force that cannot be negotiated with or contained. Its horror lies in the presence of something fundamentally incompatible with human understanding.
The East Palace, while sharing certain elements of the occult, does not fully inhabit this terrain. It retains traces of older narrative forms, particularly in its portrayal of restless spirits driven by unresolved resentment. I found myself responding most strongly to the episode of the Most Favored Lady, whose death leaves her suspended between worlds, seeking recognition and justice. This recalls a familiar structure in traditional ghost stories: the dead do not seek to overturn the order of the living but to restore it. Once their story is acknowledged, they move on. The boundaries of the world remain intact.
In this sense, The East Palace feels closer to the stories that once kept me awake during summer nights than to the more uncompromising logic of the occult. And yet, it does something else.
What distinguishes the series is its elaborate construction of an intermediate realm—a space inhabited by those who are neither fully gone nor able to move forward. In older stories, such figures appeared as intrusions, temporary disturbances within a stable world. Here, they occupy a domain of their own. They remain, act, and even organize themselves as if they have a claim to this space.
As a result, the boundary that once separated the living from the dead feels increasingly thin. Fear no longer emerges solely from figures that resemble us but from the persistence of a space where familiar rules no longer apply. What unsettles is not simply the presence of ghosts, but the existence of a system that continues to operate beyond visibility, yet in constant interaction with the living.
This is perhaps where the earlier sense of “chill” returns, though in a different form. It is less immediate, less tied to a single moment of fear, and more diffuse. The unknown is no longer something that appears and disappears; it lingers, accumulates, and circulates. Whether one reads this as an allegory of digital space—an environment that mirrors our world while operating under its own logic—or as something closer to an internal landscape shaped by memory and trauma, The East Palace extends the tradition of ghost stories into the present. It does not simply revive them. It repositions their fear within a world where what lies beyond us no longer feels entirely separate from where we stand.