Any cinephile worth their salt knows that South Korea has been blessing horror fans with some of the most exciting, original and scary stories for the last couple of decades. Train to Busan, The Wailing, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, Exhuma … the list is long and, thankfully, due to both national and overseas investment in Korean media, shows no signs of slowing down. Playing as part of New York Asian Film Festival's Horrorscope selection is a new addition to that list – Han Dong-seok's feature debut, the genre-bending thrill ride The Sin.

In The Sin, a young dancer named Si-yeong (Kim Yoon-hye) is hired to lead a mysterious, experimental movie shot high up in the mountains of Suncheon in a cavernous abandoned school. Not long after acquainting herself with cast and crew, including her college friend and co-star Chae-yoon (Song Yi-jae) and intense director Jang Hwi-uk (Park Ji-hoon), Si-yeong realizes that the film is set to awaken far more than just artistic inspiration in its viewers.

From the get-go, Han proves himself as an extremely competent director with an eye for visual flair, working alongside cinematographer Moon Sang-won to craft a horror film that's beautifully shot in a way that serves the narrative. The Sin is a movie you can feel chilling your core, with an abundance of cold, blue-tinted lighting highlighting the isolation of the mountain and Si-yeong's increasingly shattered sense of safety and self. Sweeping overhead shots of the abandoned school and its long, twisting corridors definitely call to mind the looming liminal space of The Shining's Overlook Hotel, and will put any horror aficionado in a tense headspace from the jump.

The Sin's integral premise of a ritualistic dance that summons the dead is incredibly effective due to its simplicity while paying homage to traditional Korean shamanistic practices, and the film takes a well-trodden subgenre and gives it a zesty new coat of blood-red paint. However, where The Sin stumbles is trying to over-egg this particular pudding, throwing everything from familial trauma to creepy cults into the mix. This excess of theme makes for a mixed bag that's often convoluted, and distracts from the strength of the central premise and leads to the film stumbling after its first act reveal – although these threads do eventually converge in a way that's at least highly unique.

Understandably, but still disappointingly, for a first-time feature writer, Han's script is far too intent on telling, not showing – meaning long, dialogue-heavy exposition scenes break up the flow of the action with frustrating frequency. There's also a sense that Han has yet to determine his own distinct directorial voice, and The Sin comes with a fair share of clichéd jump-scares that any horror fan will see coming a mile off due to their familiarity (not to mention, one particular audio cue taken directly from Ari Aster's Midsommar).

But despite stumbling on pacing and plot, The Sin stands out as one of the most original horrors from this year's NYAFF slate, bolstered by the strength of its central performances (Kim and Park especially), and an abundance of impressively grisly FX. Fans of the bleak school setting of Osgood Perkins' The Blackcoat's Daughter and the twisted dances of Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria will find a lot to love in The Sin.

The Sin had its North American premiere on Saturday, July 20, with another screening on Tuesday, July 23 as part of New York Asian Film Festival.