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It has been stated time and time again that a well-executed genre movie may be able to present a provocative, yet necessary view on recent developments within our world. While it is perhaps the most obvious choice to use the elements of drama, especially with a family at its center, to tell a story dealing with these themes, the same can be said for horror and science-fiction. Some of the most relevant and also timeless stories have utilized aspects of horror and dreams to create a vision which still resonates with audiences today. Director Yoon Eun-kyung (“Hotel Lake”) seems to share this view considering her latest feature “The Tenants” blends elements of both genres, resulting in a Kafkaesque tale about the human condition, especially the value of the individual within a system seeking to control and observe everything.

The Tenants is screening at Black Movie

For most of his adult life,...

Eun-Kyung Yoon's The Tenants reflects South Korean hardships that are universally traumatic. It's fringe horror, nodding to existential absurdism and black-and-white interpretations of Kafkaesque illusions, but terrifying nonetheless. Yoon examines the drab reality of middle-class workers who only exist to uphold any city's ecosystem: corrupt capitalism built on the backs of its forgotten contributors. Storytelling doesn't lack eerie imagery of crawlspace dwellers or sleep paralysis encounters, yet Yoon avoids traditional genre formulas. Don't expect the shared-space suspense of Two Pigeons or the cuckoo slasher violence of Dream Home — The Tenants plays more like artisan science fiction with slinking discomfort.

Shin-dong (Kim Dae-geon) is your typical slave to the grind. He crunches corporate numbers for Happy Meat, an artificial meat company that barely pays him enough to afford rent. That won't matter much longer because Shin-dong's child-aged landlord giddily reveals that his struggling tenant will soon be homeless due to building renovations.

It has been stated time and time again that a well-executed genre movie may be able to present a provocative, yet necessary view on recent developments within our world. While it is perhaps the most obvious choice to use the elements of drama, especially with a family at its center, to tell a story dealing with these themes, the same can be said for horror and science-fiction. Some of the most relevant and also timeless stories have utilized aspects of horror and dreams to create a vision which still resonates with audiences today. Director Yoon Eun-kyung (“Hotel Lake”) seems to share this view considering her latest feature “The Tenants” blends elements of both genres, resulting in a Kafkaesque tale about the human condition, especially the value of the individual within a system seeking to control and observe everything.

The Tenants is screening at Singapore International Film Festival

For most of his adult life,...

The Roundup Trailer — Sang-yong Lee‘s The Roundup / Beomjoidosi 2 (2022) movie trailer has been released by Madman Films. The Roundup trailer stars Ma Dong-seok, Sukku Son, Choi Gwi-hwa, Ji-hwan Park, Heo Dong-won, and Ha-Jun. Crew Min-Seong Kim wrote the screenplay for The Roundup. Plot Synopsis The Roundup‘s plot synopsis: “The Beast Cop is back for more! [...]

Continue reading: The Roundup (2022) Movie Trailer: The Beast Cop is Back & He is Tracking a Killer Across Two Countries...

"You need a good ass whooping!" Madman Films has debuted the new Australian trailer for a Korean action movie called The Roundup, which is actually a sequel to 2017's The Outlaws, also about renegade cops. The film was already released in both South Korea and the US back in May earlier this year, but it was such a quiet release we never heard about it or posted a trailer back then. I caught up with the film at the Sitges Film Festival in October and it's a blast. Train to Busan star Ma Dong-seok leads this action crime film as "The Beast Cop" who heads to Vietnam to extradite a suspect. However, he discovers additional murder cases and learns about a killer who had committed crimes against tourists for many years. He gets caught up in even more crime and chaos trying to find and stop the criminals before they disappear once again.

One of the most enjoyable South Korean action movies in recent years, 2017’s “The Outlaws” was a deft mix of brutal gang-warfare thrills and Keystone Cops comedics. It provided an ideal vehicle for Ma Dong-seok aka Don Lee (“Train to Busan” and “Eternals”) as the police investigator whose hit-first-ask-permission-later methods regularly got the job done while infuriating his superiors.

That burly protagonist and his sidekicks are back in “The Roundup,” which despite a different directorial (newbie Lee Sang-yong replacing the prior edition’s Kang Yoon-seong) and writing crew, maintains the original’s strengths. It arguably kicks them up a notch further, . Pre-sold to most offshore territories, it’s currently playing U.S. and Canadian theaters as a Capelight Pictures release.

After a prologue showing the abduction of a wealthy young Korean in Ho Chi Minh City, we re-encounter our ham-fisted hero in 2008, four years after the earlier film’s events.