Peak South Korean Cinema

Team FC

Train To Busan (2016) - Netflix

Directed by Yeon Sang-ho, Widely considered the best zombie movie ever made – acquires a new dimension of claustrophobia and relatability during this global pandemic. Train to Busan might feel like a gory genre cousin to Parasite.

Psychokinesis (2018) - Netflix

Sang-ho's second live-action film uses the language of another popular genre – the superhero origin story – as a front to attack Asian capitalism. A security guard acquires telekinetic powers after drinking "meteor water," and the rest is civics.

Parasite (Amazon Prime)

Parasite is nowhere close to Bong Joon-ho's finest (Memories of Murder). a Resourceful low-income family infiltrating a naive rich household – as an eerie reflection of Parasite's own awards journey in the white white West as a seductive "foreign language film".

The Host (2006) - Netflix

America unwittingly creates a monster in global darling Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006), a "biting" political satire dressed in the costume of a Korean creature movie.

Seoul Searching (2015) - Netflix

Benson Lee's tender but inconsistent 2015 film examines the 80s Korean immigrant experience and the global displacement of adolescence through a crowd-pleasing premise. A coming-of-age ensemble and a cross-generational melodrama – a young narrative with an old soul.

Okja (2017) - Netflix

Directed by Bong Joon-ho, The imaginative plot – of a girl raising a genetically modified super pig and going up against an evil corporation to rescue it – doubled up as a PETA crusader's wet dream as well as a perverse satire on the ruthless processed-meat industry. 

Forgotten (2017) - Netflix

Hang-jun Jang shows great finesse and feel for moment-building in this psychological thriller about a boy who pursues the truth behind his abducted brother returning with no memory of his last 19 days.

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