Thriller

The Silent Sea

An enthralling, suspenseful thriller that plays out in an abandoned maze-like lunar station and back on a resource-depleted earth, The Silent Sea (Netflix 2021)...

Escape from Mogadishu

Ryoo Seung-wan is an accomplished director of action films inflected with comedy (Veteran) or horror (Svaha: The Sixth Finger), or telling the based-on-true-stories of...

Kingdom

There are two seasons of Kingdom to date (2019 and 2020), as well as a 2021 feature-length prequel, Kingdom: Ashin of the North: all...

The Housemaid

Kim Ki-young’s seething, intense The Housemaid (1960) is a domestic horror film with more psychological heft—and visual precision—than the 2010 remake by Im Sang-soo....

Recalled

The Hitchcock-inspired Recalled (2021) is the directorial debut of Seo Yoo-min, screenwriter for The Last Princess, and fuelled by slow-burning suspense—not least about whether...

Train to Busan

Fear of invasion is embedded in the South Korean psyche. Pre-medieval Goryeo had its own Great Wall to keep the Jurchen out, and eventually...

Designated Survivor: 60 Days

A 2019 tvN adaptation of the US series of the same name, this high-concept drama has a particularly Korean political resonance. Unlike the US,...