At the2020 Academy Awards, history was made.Parasite, the genre-bending, class-examining, “metaphorical” masterpiece fromBong Joon Hoand his incredible cast, won the Oscars for Best International Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. Not only was this the first time any non-English language film won Best Picture, it was also the first time any South Korean film was honored at the Oscars in any way. If you sawParasite, saw it get honored the hell out of at the Oscars, and are thinking to yourself, “I want more,” boy howdy am I excited to share the following list with you.
First: As many folks smarter than I havealready observed, it is a bit reductive and Western-centric to collapse all of South Korean cinema together. “South Korean cinema” is not a genre, it is a country’s mode of artistic expression, and there are tons and tons of genres, different directors, and points of entry therein. However, the goal of expanding a film fan’s purview to other countries is, I believe, a noble one – particularly when examined within South Korea’s history moving tumultuously from authoritarian rule to democratic independence, resulting in part in what’s oft-referred to as the Korean New Wave, an explosion of cinematic freedom resulting in some uniquely unified expressions of filmic experimentation and quality. As such, I’ve done my best to curate this list with an eye on variety and representation, while acknowledging this country’s particular history and national experiences.
Without further ado, film fans: Here are the 20 best South Korean films to watch if you couldn’t get enough ofParasite. And if you loved these – go find yourself some more! It’s an entire country’s film industry, don’tcha know!
A Tale of Two Sisters
Director/Writer: Kim Jee-woon
Cast: Im Soo-jung, Moon Geun-young, Yum Jung-ah, Kim Kap-soo
“Traumas of the past weaving into a present tense, genre-soaked narrative” is a mode of expression for many films of the contemporary Korean New Wave. InA Tale of Two Sisters, from the masterfully bleak-and-tone-blendingKim Jee-woon, the traumas explored come from an ancient folktale of the Joseon dynasty, a kingdom that lasted for approximately 500 years in the area that we now know as Korea. Kim takes this folktale, a story involving the visceral abuse of stepmother against daughter and the spiritual reckoning that comes from ghosts, and soaks it in disturbingly surreal vignettes of blood, jarring interrogations of patriarchy, and a twist that punches you in the gut.A Tale of Two Sisterssticks to your bones like the best blunt horrors, and sticks in your heart like the best pieces of mythology (and if you’re into it, and want a similar film that plays a little more like dessert, check out Kim’s WesternThe Good, the Bad, the Weird).
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Writers: Oh Jung-mi, Lee Chang-dong
Cast: Yoo Ah-in, Steven Yeun, Jeon Jong-seo
Burningis not just the title of this film – it’s the description of what will happen to your guts while you watch it! But, like, in a good way!Burningis an incisive, exacting, patiently-paced psychological thriller. And directorLee Chang-donghas found himself a sterling cast anchoring his excellent film, particularlyWalking DeadstarSteven Yeun, giving a simultaneously alluring and disturbing depiction of a manipulative, sociopathic mastermind. The film’s de facto detective is played byYoo Ah-in, who is determined to find the truth about Yeun, as he’s datingJeon Jong-seo, a former classmate whom Yoo likely has a crush on. And as Yoo stalks closer and closer to the truth (or, more accurately, “the truth”), Lee and co-writerOh Jung-mi’s script confidently, subtly flips the statuses of power, of obsession, of paranoia, and of trust. You just might need a glass of ginger ale after watching this powerfully discombobulating film.
The Chaser
Director: Na Hong-jin
Writers: Na Hong-jin, Shinho Lee, Hong Won-chan
Cast: Kim Yoon-seok, Ha Jung-woo, Seo Young-hee
I love how so many South Korean genre pictures are willing to be long. These types of films (i.e. the aforementionedBurning) flow and explore every nook and cranny of their premise, easily besting two hours in length while not once providing any sense of boredom, and always keeping their audience enthralled.The Chaseris the exception that proves the rule. It clocks in just a little over two hours, which is not exactly the tightest a chase-based thriller could be paced at. But directorNa Hong-jin, miraculously making his debut film, works tirelessly with editorKim Sun-minto renderThe Chaserwith ruthless, startling efficiency. It’s a lean, mean, stunning piece of genre work, with Na and his co-writersShinho LeeandHong Won-chanfilling starKim Yoon-seok’s grimy world with gnarly, authentic specifics (makes sense, given it’s based on the real-life case of notorious serial killerYoo Young-chul).The Chaserwill raise your heart rate and thensome – show it to an action junkie in need of a fix.
Chilsu and Mansu
Director: Park Kwang-su
Writers: Choe In-seok, Chi Sang-hak, Lee Sang-woo
Cast: Ahn Sung-ki, Park Joong-hoon
A quick bit of context: In 1988, whenPark Kwang-sureleasedChilsu and Mansu, South Korea was undergoing a particularly painful process of democratization. The oppressive, authoritarian regime its people have been under for some time is slowly starting to erode (at a similar pace and time as other Cold War nations like the Soviet Union), leaving a class of folks cautiously optimistic of the future, but terrified of the entrenched terrors of the recent past. Thus,Chilsu and Mansuworks cannily not just as a beautifully rendered, kitchen-sink-warts-and-all two-handed drama from actorsAhn Sung-kiandPark Joong-hoon, but as a large step forward for how South Korean citizens – and filmmakers – would reckon with this slow-burning, newfound freedom. It’s a movie filled with yearning, with richly rendered characters, with complicated relationships to the creeping influence of Western cultural imperialism. You could watch Ahn and Park talk all day, and their director knows exactly how appealing their easy chemistry is, not needing to adorn their interactions with much. If you digSpike Lee’s25th Hour, a talky drama with the brutal subtext of its proximity to 9/11, you will absolutely digChilsu and Mansu.
Extreme Job
Director: Lee Byeong-heon
Writer: Bae Se-young
Cast: Ryu Seung-ryong, Lee Hanee, Jin Seon-kyu, Lee Dong-hwi, Gong Myung
Dear gods, I love this movie. Part slapstick ensemble comedy, part cop thriller, and ultimately, one heck of a delightful action movie,Extreme Jobis without question one of the best times I had in a theater all year.Seung-ryong Ryustars as Captain Ko, the leader of a ragtag squadron of undercover drug enforcement who just absolutely cannot stop botching the job. With one last chance to prove themselves, they go undercover at a fried chicken restaurant and… get so caught up in their thriving chicken business they almost forget about their real jobs. Featuring an ace ensemble cast playing loveable oddball characters,Extreme Jobis pure movie-going joy, an energetic and exuberant crime comedy that will keep a smile plastered on your face throughout, from the banter and silly antics to thebest-of-the-decade-worthy finale fight scene.- Haleigh Foutch
The Handmaiden
Director: Park Chan-wook
Writers: Park Chan-wook, Chung Seo-kyung
Cast: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong
This film might be – and I do not make this claim lightly – the horniest film of the 2010’s.The Handmaidentransports the time and place of its source material (Victorian England; theSarah WatersnovelFingersmith) to Japanese-occupied Korea.Park Chan-wookandChung Seo-kyung’s screenplay is twisted, kinky, thoroughly examining, deliriously entertaining, and breathlessly audacious. When I watch the film, I’m struck by how soapy everything feels, in the absolute best way possible. Leading performersKim Min-heeandKim Tae-riaren’t afraid to lean in to the sexual melodrama of it all, giving stylized and physicalized performances that pop with gleeful abandon. Park’s villainous men, especially the ink-tonguedCho Jin-woong, also tackle their roles with shocking relish. However – and here is where Park’s sneakily progressive designs become more apparent – there is a stark difference between the sexual desires of the film’s heterosexual relationships and its queer relationships. I’m likely over-reducing, but pretty much every depiction of heterosexual attraction is weaponized in this film, as either a piece of abusive power-grabbing from men to women, or as a tool for revenge from women to men. The closestThe Handmaidengets to a true, sincere expression of erotic love – and I use “closest” because the film is, indeed, very twisted – comes from a centralized queer relationship. To say any more would deny a first-time viewer so many of the surprising, inviting turns at the center of this period-pulp masterpiece.
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Writers: Baek Chul-hyun, Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona, Go Ah-sung
If the onlyBong Joon Hofilm you’ve seen isParasite, holy cannoli am I excited for you to dive into his back catalog. I like to pitch Bong to friends who haven’t heard of him as “Spielberg going for the jugular.” Of course, Spielberg is Spielberg in part because of his many perfect, family-driven monster movies (yourJawses, yourJurassic Parks). And Bong is Bong in part because ofThe Host, his 2006 take on the sub-genre. The film, perhaps the closest of his previous works toParasite, bobs and weaves through various tones and flavors adeptly, shifting between paranoid eco-conspiracy thriller mode, painfully earnest family drama mode, and glorious, delirious, terrorizing monster mode. Early in the picture, Bong stages one of the best monster attack sequences I’ve ever seen in a motion picture – and he does it by breaking every single damn rule. It’s staged in broad daylight, it shows its monster in full-bodied glory with nary a sense of “artfully hiding the shark,” and it all still manages to crackle with more suspense, character-driven pain, and even humor than any American monster flick released since.The Hostslaps! How else can I put it? Watch it already!
House of Hummingbird
Director/Writer: Kim Bora
Cast: Park Ji-hoo, Kim Sae-byuk, Jung In-gi, Lee Seung-yeon
Many of the acclaimed South Korean films that make it to the States are darker than dark, genre-tinged explorations of a particularly masculine form of misanthropy and pain.House of Hummingbird, by contrast and by relief, ain’t that.Kim Bora’s film is, instead, a simple, lyrical, truthful exploration of a teenage girl’s journey through Seoul in 1994 – a time of unrest and growth for the city, the perfect backdrop for her lightly tempestuous coming of age.Park Ji-hooplays the 14-year-old lead character in a masterfully authentic anchoring performance. She feels both like every adolescent who ever lived and growed, and so specified and formed by her upbringings, her family foibles, her culture. Like many of the best independent coming-of-age films, Kim structures the work in a series of episodic-feeling vignettes, in which Park is given the chance to react to all kinds of stimuli, from ill-fated crushes to outbursts of mildly criminal mischief. The “plot,” as much as there is one, kicks in a little higher when Park finds herself crushing on an adult professor – but by and large, this is not a film beholden to plot. It’s a film of texture, of feeling, of experience.
The Housemaid
Director/Writer: Kim Ki-young
Cast: Kim Jin-kyu, Lee Eun-shim, Ju Jeung-ryu, Um Aing-ran
Released in 1960,Kim Ki-young’sThe Housemaidis one of the most essential and influential films ever made in South Korea. Its DNA is embedded in nearly every film on this list (especially the similarly-namedThe Handmaiden) and would absolutely make a devilish double feature withParasite. The black-and-white shocker details a crackling story of obsession, eroticism, violence, manipulation, and madness – all while commenting slyly on the class issues rife in our modernized society of wealth hierarchies and human labor-driven conveniences. It all starts when a composer and his pregnant wife, working herself to the bone despite her condition, decide to hire a housemaid to help around the house. And things escalate… quickly. Kim’s work deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as canonical psychological thrillers likePsychoorDiabolique. It twists just as many “primal human impulses” to their breaking point, and possesses a sick and squirming sense of humor, right down to its morbidly self-aware ending.
I Saw the Devil
Director: Kim Jee-woon
Writer: Park Hoon-jung
Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik
I Saw the Devilis not for the faint of heart, on either a physical or psychological level.Park Hoon-jung, a screenwriter who’s gone on to become an in-demand director in South Korea, wrote himself one helluva “find the serial killer” film, one that’s ruthlessly interested in examining the destructive psychological tickings behind murder, obsession, revenge, and maybe the most bleak depiction of pure hatred I’ve ever seen on screen. AndKim Jee-woonrenders all of this brutality in, well, brutal detail, splashing the screen with capital V Viscera (captured with stylish, hyper-saturated, perverse beauty by cinematographerLee Mo-gae). StarsLee Byung-hunandChoi Min-sikplay their demented cat-and-mouse game of detective out for revenge and killer out for blood (respectively) with somber, head-down, captivating commitment. If you’ve ever wantedThe Silence of the Lambsto feel 900 times more personal, 900 times more violent, and 900 times less hopeful, seeI Saw the Devil.
