Hansel & Gretel (2007)

Eun-soo, a salesman, is driving on a highway while arguing on the phone with his pregnant girlfriend. He crashes and wakes in a dark forest, where a girl named Young-hee leads him to her home, a house called the House of Happy Children. He meets her parents, her older brother Man-bok and her little sister Jung-soon.

Eun-soo cannot find his way out of the forest, and the children watch his every move. The parents leave, with a note asking him to look after the children. He discovers the "parents" were also travellers trapped there, and that the children decide who stays and what happens to anyone who displeases them.

A deacon named Byun and his wife arrive, lost in the woods. When Byun's wife accuses Jung-soon of stealing her ring, she disappears. Eun-soo follows Man-bok into the woods, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, and finds a mysterious door. Inside are the children's notebook and records showing they were born around 1960. They have stayed children for decades. Man-bok can make whatever he imagines come true, and he has drawn the deaths of earlier adults in his notebook. Eun-soo finds a drawing of himself.

Young-hee explains their past. They lived in an orphanage, also called the House of Happy Children, where the director beat the boys and abused the girls. One Christmas, Man-bok made Santa Claus appear, and Santa gave them a Hansel and Gretel storybook and their powers. After watching a friend beaten to death, they turned their powers on the director. Since then they have searched for kind parents, punishing every adult who failed them.

Deacon Byun turns out to be a cult leader and killer who believes the children are evil and tries to kill them. Using their powers, the children make Byun cut his own throat. They then ask Eun-soo to stay forever as their father.

Eun-soo refuses. He has a family waiting, and he offers to take the children with him instead. They believe all grown-ups are cruel and refuse. He tells them that if they keep punishing adults, they will become just like the people who hurt them. Young-hee tells him to burn the notebook, and he does. He wakes up at the roadside where he crashed, and police are amazed that anyone survived that stretch of highway.

A year later, at Christmas, Eun-soo is married with a baby son. He finds the children's notebook. The pages are blank except the last, which shows the three siblings holding hands and smiling. The meaning: the children have stopped searching for parents. They have realised they are already a family. They walk back into the snowy woods together, finally at peace.