The Phantom Whispers by Moonkyoung Kim is something that seems to creep upon you when you are not looking. It is not a pounding horror crammed with monsters on the screen. Instead, it whispers, waits, and creeps into your skin without you knowing. The plot is focused on the life of a girl, called Noa, who is bothered by the voice that she has been hearing in her head for time. Not the amiable type of voice, it talks wherever she does not want it to, it knows things she cannot, and it is never quite out of the way. She is adjoined to it for so long it is virtually a portion of her. Up until murder is committed and the voice changes as soon as the murder occurs.
It has become evident that it is not the usual mystery since the first episode of the first season. It is painfully sluggish, cumbersome, and skeptical. This murder is only a spark. It is a genuine narrative of the collapsing brain of Noa and barely breathing line between living and dead. Her voice in her head begins to lead her to comprehend who was the killer saying who was the killer that she was the only person who could have done it. The policemen seem to ignore her, her friends fade away, and the world begins to work. You are capable of seeing how she falls deeper into confusion, to figure out whether the ghost leads her or she is already going mad. That uncertainty becomes the second suspense of the tale – she can still not address anyone anymore and anything.
What is interesting about Phantom Whsipers is it mixes psychological horror and silent grief. It's not loud or flashy. No blood or low end scare to try and shock you with. Instead, it abides in your mind. Start to hear the silence between sentences, that emphasized breath, that stepped noise down an empty hall. In a few of them, you’re waiting on nothing despite the feeling that you’re being stared at. That kind of fear feels real. It is types that ooze out slowly, like a shadow everywhere.
Noa is one of those people you’d never forget. She's not strong or confident. She is scared and tired and she keeps doubting herself. But that is what makes her human. You can tell how lonely she is, so she covers her fear with different cold fronts. At times, she is in a war with the voice. And on some occasions she tries to talk with it because it's another person. Those are shitty times because it’s clearly how she’s trying to keep some semblance of control. You start to realize this is NOT another story about catching a killer. It's about a girl trying to keep it together when her brain is falling apart.
They treat her mental state so well in webtoon. It is not afraid of it, nor is it a laughing matter. It shows us the way that life is tired with something unnoticed. All the meltdowns of Noa, her confusion, her attempts to keep things normal all powerfully real. The writer was able to make her story believable but not just sad you can tell she took time to make them believable. It’s not a myth anymore, when she looks in the mirror and sees it looking at her differently, or hears the voice calling to her at night. Something like that is the truth for anyone who lived with the fear too long.
The art is worthy of recognition in its own right. It's beautifully gloomy. And the colour is muted, but intense – lots of grey and blue, with good amounts of dark purple. It casts a bizarre silence over everything, as if the world were silent itself. The superenatural details are never too shiny. Sometimes the ghost is a blurb, sometimes a smudge on a glass, or just something holding itself in for fear of light. So much is invented here that it seems real. The lighting is also enormous. It glares as of blight, grows dull and roams upand down, That the eyes that see it Waken a doubt if they see. And you are having the thoughts of Noa in your head, and you can’t get them out of it, and they’re not something that it’s at all comfortable to have stuck inside there.
Strength wise, another strong point is the dialogue. The voice is recounted in short, cryptic phrases that achieve a poetry-like sound. Sometimes it might comfort Noa, sometimes torment her; but at times the sound of it seems almost to be rapping her on the knuckles. We can’t say whether it’s saving her or conversely bringing her to a dark place. Noa’s reactions are crude and sentimental. She screams, she curses, she begs it to stop. Their conversations are a muscular head-to-head between two. It’s haunting, in the best way.
Then comes the point in her own story when the mystery starts to close in around her. Every clue she finds makes matters worse. Every question leads to the next. People around her start dying as the voice grows louder. The scenes are such that you don't know if she is awake or sleeping. The background goes dead sometimes, and then there is Noa and that voice. It’s the situations that get me most because it shows how tiny she really is without having her dress in layers or lost helping make her feel smaller.
That it is combined with fear and compassion is what gives Phantom Whispers its strength. You are afraid for Noa, but you also love her. It's not even that you want the murderer let free, you need her let free. “Some of the scenes are like about-to-touch moments, where you can exhale her prayer for peace. Just to hear the whisper again and all comes crashing down once more. The whole walks very slowly, but appears considerate, and allow you time to breathe between pulling at the rein.
If you too enjoy the type of mystery that lingers, stories and characters that images remain in your mind’s eye – it simply will not leave you alone, let one reader tell me he broke his heart for a character. Phantom Whispers should then be on your to-be-read stack! You just have to be disposed to listen then. The whispers don't really stop.