One hair-raising moment in the Korean thriller “The Ghost Station,” a tale of people having subway”accidents” that look like nothing of the sort, involves cell phone tech.

Someone points their cell camera down a tunnel. The focus framing outline pops up on the cell screen as the device zeroes in on what it senses the owner is trying to photograph. The phone sees what the eyes can’t as this frame jumps back and forth, quickly closing in on our wireless customer, who is, by this point, understandably freaked-out.

This brief and seriously derivative ghost story has a Korean director, cast and settings, and a Japanese screenwriter and references to a “grudge” and a “well.” J-horror fans will get those references.

Most of the creepy stuff is tucked into an explained-to-death-but-we’ve-already-figured-it-out third act. But it more or less holds one’s interest, and it manages a chill or two.

Kim Bor-ra play Na-young, a cub reporter with Daily Modu. She’s just screwed-up when we meet her, getting reamed-out for not knowing her selection for a “Summer ‘It’ Girl” photo feature is transgender, and apparently inadvertantly “outing” her.

A lawsuit is pending. But when your job is to generate clickbait, you can barely pause to consider that.

“We’re not a legitimate news outlet,” her editor (Kim Na-Yoon) lectures her. “We’re a cheap tabloid. Don’t forget who we are.”

That’s why she chooses to make something out of a tragic accident-or-suicide at a nearby subway station. She sees weird things going on — a woman jerking about as if yanked, clues about a “second victim” at the accident scene. The embalmer who showed up to clean up the mess confirms it. He saw a child underneath a stairwell next to the tracks. She showed him a number on a cardboard placard, and vanished.

Digging into the mystery, warned away from “ghost stories” by the detective who decided this was an open and shut case and harangued by her abusive, pageviews-crazed publisher (Kim Soo-jin), Na young will clickbait her way to some answers, endangering herself and others as she does followup story after followup story.

One interview subject turns out to have died an hour before their chat. And what’s up with those fingernail scratches those entrapped in this mystery seem to have?

The brevity of “The Ghost Station” means that there isn’t a lot of time for gravitas. But not a lot happens until that third act. The solution to the mystery shocks and appalls, but it is about as original as “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Still, it’s short, so it’s not an utter waste of time. Or not a waste of much time.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Kim Bor-ra, Kim Jeahyun, Shin So-yul,
Kim Na-Yoon and Kim Soo-jin

Credits: Directed by Hiroshi Takahashi, scripted by Jeong Yong-ki. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:20