Thrillers are perhaps the safest bet in the uncertain world of movie making and when it comes to thrillers South Korea has been the clear front-runner in the last two decades in our cinematic universe.
It was a watershed moment in the history of world cinema this year when Bong Joon Ho's Parasite won multiple Oscars including Best Picture.
The first non-english movie to win the award in 92 years. Are the Academy Awards the best judge of cinematic qualities? Maybe not but you can't deny its popularity and the kind of interest this win generates for Korean cinema and overall non-english content.
So if you are someone who loved Parasite and now are itching to watch more Korean thrillers we have got you covered.
Here's MovieToast's list of top 5 Korean thrillers and our analysis on what makes them great. We have left out the supernatural thrillers in this list and will come back with an exclusive ranking on them.
Korean thrillers are primarily about revenge and bringing on a sense of justice at any cost. In the best movies of this lot this act of vengeance starting from the build-up to the release feels like a musical as if an orchestra playing in tune.
One might wonder what is this about this country and the film industry's obsession with gory revenge dramas? Perhaps it is the natural emotional core which brings out the extravagant display of emotions including vengeance or it might be the flexible censorship conditions in the country as compared to the rest of Asia It might as well be the country's political history of attack and deception that leads to the Korean creative minds to keep exploring new ideas of adrenaline pushing roller-coaster rides for its audience.
And when we talk about adrenaline rush the chaser number five analyst might be the perfect example.
Directed by Hong Ji Na The Chaser is a story of an ex-policeman turned pimp in a race against time situation to save one of his girls from a serial killer. The movie does not thrive in withholding information from its audience like any other ordinary thriller.
Instead we are well aware early into the film who the killer is and in the process participate in the search for the missing girl and nabbing off the abductor.
It is the frustration of missing to catch the killer at every turn and the pulsating tension to save the girl that makes the movie such an intense personal experience.
At times the tension reaches such a high that one might find difficult to cope up and take a pause to calm down. This one is a mighty gruesome movie with a grim atmosphere all around. The violence is contextual and definitely not for the sake of it.
The movie was actually inspired by events of brutal serial killings in Korea when the killer was once arrested by the police but let off soon mistaken as a petty thief. Motifs of police incompetency plays a crucial role in the film which you will find in many Korean thrillers including few others which we have today in our list.
On the rainy night of his daughter's birthday Oh-Dae-Su is abducted and imprisoned in a dilapidated shabby room for 15 years. To his surprise he is suddenly released one day and from there on it is his journey to find out why he was imprisoned and then take his revenge on his abductor.
You need a strong stomach to digest the action set-pieces which are both immensely brutal and lyrical. The 3.5 minute long corridor fight scene taken in a single tracking shot without edits is one of the best fight scenes ever in world cinema.
Oh-Dae-Su is no hitman, with no formal combat training he gets kicked, stabbed, sits down on the floor for a couple of seconds and then stands up again to keep fighting. It is this combination of rooted brutality and aesthetic pleasures that makes this sameband the entire film such an amazing feat.
Min-sik-Choi act as Oh-Dae-Su is another reason the film is such an awesome experience.His transformation from an average drunk to a combat warrior is a cinematic ride in itself.
Add to that the color compositions of red green and purple creating a subtext of its own accompanied by the complex sound design. Oh-Dae-Su's fanatic search for truth once out of the prison turns out to be a prison itself. Perhaps a far more tormenting one and finally when he faces the truth, his truth becomes a whole new prison again. Truth and lies intertwine and by the time you reach the visceral climax regardless of how you look at the film it will definitely be something which you have never seen before.
At number 3 we have another classic from director Bong-Joon-Ho Memories of murder. Another serial killer story based on real-life incidents in Korea between 1986 to 1991. Another film which laments on the incompetence of the police a recurring pattern in Korean cinema.
However for a change it is two police detectives who are the protagonists here determined to catch the serial killer in their own distinctive ways. When the movie was filmed the real-life serial killer was yet not captured and the movie feels like Bong's question on why did we fail to catch the killer?
This helplessness which runs throughout the film equally for its characters and its audience is the crux of the movie. A frustration the Koreans lived with for years. Early in the movie detective Park suggests he can identify a culprit just by the looks but by the end he finds his confidence strained.
The more mature detective Seo goes by the book all along but eventually starts giving away to his instincts under a cute exasperation. And in a gem of a scene when we the audience find the killer choosing between two potential victims that memory of helplessness stays with us forever.
At the end when Park looks straight into the camera as if still searching for the killer we realize the subtle suggestion, the murderer is still out there hiding among the audience.
Number two on our list is Burning by master director Chang-Dong-Li each of the six feature films directed by Li is a masterpiece in itself unified by the character portrayals at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control.
Burning is a metaphysical thriller based on a deceptively simple short story by acclaimed writer Haruki Murakami. It is a long slow paced yet edge of the seat movie which transforms into a surreal experience once the film gets under your skin.
Yes there's a story on the surface that of an aspiring writer and a rich hotshot with a mysterious girl in between. But the story is just a prop , a medium for director Li to raise burning questions around the sense of truth and reality in today's world.
Burning is a film loaded with undercurrents in every frame. It is a tale so layered in its mysteries and ambiguities that you don't realize when it started tightening its grip on you and by the time you start struggling for air you realize there's none around.
In the film we apparently see barns burning but it is actually a burning commentary on our class driven society. The sense of uncertainty that prevails in the film is not just about an unsolved mystery but also about the socio-economic structure of the world we live in today, where one class lives uncertain of even a meager future and the other does not have to consider minimal work for a living. It is about the everyday burning of us. the common man without actually catching fire.
As before we move to our number one placeholder a special mention in our list. once again it is director Chan-Wook-Park and his film Joint Security Area is our special mention.
After a shooting incident in the North and South Korean DMZ border which leads two North Korean soldiers dead, a neutral investigating team comes to find out what actually happened.
JSA is a decent trailer but it's unique premise and politically-charged story leaves its marks on the viewers.
The humanitarian touch the film brings around the volatile tension between the two fighting neighbors is extremely moving and keenly intelligent.
Okay, now to the number one position on the list
To call out one film to be the best among the long-running list of gems is a mighty difficult task. But having watched Bong-Joon-Ho's 2009 classic Mother, you might feel it wasn't such a difficult task after all.
Mother is not only arguably the best Korean thriller but one of the finest films in the history of cinema. Mother is a devastating experience, one that dazzles and damages you at the same time.
An elderly lady slowly dances within a cold tinted field. Her expressions are cryptic throughout and from time to time she hides her eyes or mouth or hand. This cover-up is the central theme of Bong's masterpiece Mother while his favorite themes of class division and police incompetence return as well.
The series of close-ups, characters almost always viewed in profile shots and the final gut punch of a scene in jail custody subtly points out that we, the audience is always witnessing half truth.
Truth in its entirety is always hidden from us much like the characters of the movie. We are like Yoon Do, the mentally challenged son, unreliable and incapable to presenting the complete reality of any circumstance. What's reality anyway? What's true? What is pure? Bong perhaps puts these very questions on the table in his attempt in dissecting motherhood, the epitome of purity and the truth in the human societal structure.
The mother's undying love for her son runs through the film in a relentless attempt in saving her son from a murder charge. There's no denying this truth but then in upholding the truth of motherhood the mother kills the truth itself and then in spite of all that the mother is still judged, still misunderstood and still in pain.
The half truth still prevails and it is the pain which remains at the end of it all. A pain intense enough to recede all memory and set up a fresh start.
Yet another loop of lies, love and pain. The dance at the beginning of the film returns the mother's ascent or descent into euphoria and madness. Perhaps this is what it is about Korean thrillers.
They address deeper ambiguities and bcomplexities of life, all into a supremely engaging and nail-biting thriller format.The pleasures of an edge of the seat drama and thought-provoking insights come together in the same package making them such a worthwhile experience.
That's all for today. These were the thriller from Korean cinema. We promise to bring similar interesting thriller lists from Japan, Spain and India as well.