“As a surgeon, I was just trying to cut him open to get at the truth.” A late-cycle, South Korean variation on Diabolique (1955), Lee Man-Hee’s Maeui gyedan (US: The Devil’s Stairway) explores the time-tested theme of guilt begetting terror. Set in a close-knit hospital community, the story is divided into two halves: in the first, surgeon Hyeon Gwang-ho (Kim Jin-kyu) is driven to murder by his desperation to end his affair with nurse Nam Jin-suk (Moon Jung-suk) so that he can marry the hospital director’s daughter (Bang Seong-ja); in the second, the newly married Gwang-ho begins to see visions (of his victim come back to life) and hear sounds (i.e., the thump of her crutches in the hallway) that ultimately drive him to the verge of a nervous breakdown. One hazard common to both halves is a dilapidated staircase that proves as dangerous as a firearm and makes one wonder how the hospital (whose architecture at certain angles resembles the Bates Motel) could possibly have passed inspection. With plenty of frights and shocks, the film is visually dynamic, using rapid pans, jump cuts, aerial shots, and asymmetrical reflections to represent the intensifying chaos in the surgeon’s mind, while aurally, the meandering score moves through jazzy saxophone, swelling orchestra, percussion crashes, and dreamy groans. (We also get an occasional and completely unnecessary interior voice-over that dumbs down the script.)