Hide and Seek

Dongdaemun Apartment in Changsin-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, is one of the places Hide and Seek was shot: KMDb's location list names it, and so does a December 2013 Asia Today feature on the building. The block went up in 1965 as the first apartment building of the Korea Housing Corporation. According to Asia Today it has six floors and 131 units reached by open corridors, drew entertainers as residents in the 1970s, and has been named a Seoul Future Heritage site.

KMDb lists other locations for the shoot as well; no second source confirms them.

Production designer Jeon Soo-a had to make two homes that could hardly be further apart, and Yun Mi-ra dressed the people living in them (Cine21 credits; Letterboxd lists both, Korean Wikipedia the designer).

Critics picked up on that split first. Variety's reviewer set the grimy, maze-like block against the luxury condo, and described a camera that keeps nosing through detailed interiors until a hidden space opens up, with silhouettes and reflections in glass adding a chill borrowed from Japanese horror. AsianMovieWeb found the decaying complex well captured and heavy to be inside. HorrorDNA noticed what the film leaves out: no lingering gore and no slow-motion killings.

A home that cannot be defended is the idea reviewers kept returning to. Culture Crypt read the film as an argument that cameras, monitors and door codes give only the feeling of safety, and HorrorDNA put it as a question: is your home yours alone, or is someone else there while you are out? AsianMovieWeb named the same fear for the safety of one's own flat.

Class sits underneath. Variety called the story a blunt allegory of the haves and the have-nots and was uneasy about how unkindly it paints its poor characters. Pierce Conran, writing for the Korean Film Council, linked the contrast between old, shabby blocks and new, gleaming towers to how fast Korea turned into a modern consumer society.

Wikipedia puts the budget at ₩2.5 billion. The Korean Film Council (KOFIC) database records a release on 779 screens and 5,604,106 total admissions.

The score is by Jo Yeong-wook, the cinematographer was Kim Il-yeon, and Next Entertainment World handled distribution.

When China Daily covered the Chinese remake in 2016, it described the story as loosely adapted from real events: in 2010, some homes in South Korea were found marked with mysterious symbols.

A Chinese remake, also called Hide and Seek, was directed by Liu Jie and stars Wallace Huo and Qin Hailu, with Regina Wan Qian in the cast. Variety named its producers as Ellen Eliasoph of Village Roadshow Pictures Asia, Gigi Qi of New Clues and Lizhi Chen of Spire Media. China Daily reported that it opened in Chinese cinemas on 4 November 2016.