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Movie of the Day: Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital
Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital is a Filipino found-footage horror movie in the vein of South Korea’s Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. In fact, the characters in the film even mention Gonjiam. So if you’ve seen that movie (and you should), you’ll have a good idea of what to expect here.
Strange Frequencies focuses on a group of celebrities who travel to Taiwan to enter a notoriously haunted location, Xinglin Hospital. They’ve joined forces to explore the hospital and livestream their investigation into the supposed paranormal phenomena the location is infamous for. The filmmaker putting the event together isn’t above setting up a few fake scares to attract more viewers, but artificial scares aren’t needed once the celebs split up to investigate. They start encountering odd and inexplicable events almost immediately, which eventually culminate in a frenzy of panic, terror, and, potentiality, death.
For about two-thirds of Strange Frequencies, I was having an okay time. The first fifteen minutes are a little rough as the celebrities are gathered together and the basic premise of the story is set up through lots of talking and a bit of sightseeing. Thankfully though, they get into the hospital fairly quickly. Once inside, the atmosphere is pretty good. It feels overly familiar and a bit cheesy, but there are a few decent jump scares and a handful of eerie moments. This section of the movie, of the initial explorations of the hospital, is fine. Nothing particularly notable, but fine. However, the final thirty minutes are worth the wait.
The final third of the film is packed with fun action. Everyone is trapped in the hospital (in an overly contrived way, but it’s excusable), and by this point the supernatural presence in the building is trying to get everybody. There’s lots of running, lots of screaming and shouting, and a good amount of spooky violence. I thoroughly enjoyed this section of Strange Frequencies.
The ending is so-so, but by that point I didn’t mind so much. My bigger issues were with some of the obvious cheats to the found-footage format. The movie puts in non-diegetic sounds to enhance certain moments, and there’s a distracting amount of on-screen text at times. I’m not referring to subtitles, I’m referring to things like the time of night being posted for no real reason, the livestream viewer count being shown repeatedly, etc. There are also cheats with the cameras, where we see footage from an angle when it is clear that no camera is pointing in that direction. All these cheats are forgivable since most found footage movies do these things anyway, but it’s a bit of a distraction for me personally.
Star Rating: 3 out of 5
Without the fun of the final thirty minutes, Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital would have been ranked at least half a star, maybe a full star lower. It’s good, familiar fun overall though, and I’d recommend it to any fan of supernatural found footage horror movies. You can stream Strange Frequencies on Netflix.
In the News
- Lin Shaye and Amelia Eve are set to star in the next Insidious movie. Lin Shaye has appeared in all five of the Insidious movies so far. No story details have been revealed, but plans are to begin filming next week. The movie is currently scheduled to be released on August 21, 2026. (Deadline)
- A24 is reportedly the front-runner to buy the rights to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, though Deadline suggests that this might overstate the reality of the situation. The news was first broken by The InSneider.
Birthdays
Marcus Henderson was born on September 13th, 1987. Mracus played Walter, the groundskeeper, in Get Out (2017). He was also a detective in Insidious: The Last Key (2018).
Events on This Day
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare was released in theaters on September 13th, 1991. The day of the movie’s release was also declared as “Freddy Krueger Day” by then-mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley. A ceremony was held at Mann’s Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, now TCL Chinese Theatre). Mayor Bradley, however, was not at the ceremony. He was instead across town to oversee the opening of a sewage treatment plant. Robert Englund was at the ceremony, and he received the signed proclamation from a mayoral aide.
Though Freddy was (and is) a pop-culture icon, not everyone was thrilled with the idea of celebrating a serial killer, even a fictional killer who has dream powers. The media covered organizations that opposed Freddy Kruger Day. The event even made it onto The Tonight Show where Johnny Carson joked about it.
More movies released on September 13th:
- Bloody Mallory (DVD in the United States, 2005)
- Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
