Reviewed - A Tale of Two Sisters/ Janghwa, Hongryeon: A film that dares to employ the creaky old twist that this Korean ghost story springs on its audience halfway through probably deserves to be dismissed out of hand, writes Donald Clarke

But A Tale of Two Sisters is something rather special. A sombre tale of madness and abuse played out in murky, opulent surroundings - only David Lynch has done creepier things with pretty fabrics - it manages the tricky business of remaining consistently gripping even as its dizzying reversals render the plot close to unintelligible. It would be rash to declare it a masterpiece, but it is easily the best horror film of the year so far.

After being released from hospital with some obscure ailment, two sisters (Im Soo-jung and Moon Geun-young) arrive to stay with their father and his second wife, Eun-joo, in a beautiful, run-down house. The film is based on a Korean myth and, the ancients being as hard on stepmothers as the writers of soap opera are today, it soon transpires that Eun-joo has it in for the girls.

An ominous atmosphere emanates from an upstairs cupboard. There is something ghastly in the fridge. Shadowy figures shuffle about at night. To give away any more would be a crime.

Though the film has some of the flavour of The Shining, it remains its own beast. Lee Mo-gae's incredibly dark cinematography has the disconcerting habit of lulling you into complacent admiration just as something pointy is waiting to come right at you. What you see, however, is not nearly as unnerving as what you hear. Utilising eerie scratches, unwelcome creaks and Lee Byung-woo's nagging score, the sound design bores into the id without much troubling other, more wary parts of the brain.

Like so many fairy stories, A Tale of Two Sisters has much to do with burgeoning sexuality and the onset of responsibility. And in putting the house before us as a simulacrum for the psyche, the film goes to some of the same places as Mark Z. Danielewski's recent, brilliant novel House of Leaves.

But it is in the mechanics of its suspense that Kim Jee-Woon's film stands out. And yes, Hollywood has bought the rights.