Right now, the whole world is talking about one film: Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. The South Korean auteur’s latest film has attracted rave reviews, the biggest prize at Cannes, and now a series of groundbreaking Oscars wins – not to mention Golden Globes and BAFTAs too. After the film streaked ahead to nab Best Picture (ahead of favourites including 1917 and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) as well as winning the Best Director award for Bong himself, there’s never been a better time to get on board with one of the most exciting filmmakers of recent years – a director whose genre-bending, tone-shifting movies are consistently thrilling. Whether you’re a total newcomer, or preparing a deeper dive into his back catalogue, welcome to the world of Director Bong.
Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)
Bong Joon Ho’s debut film remains something of a curio beyond South Korea – partly because it’s never had an official release in the UK (and only recently was made available in the US), and partly because the director himself is these days dismissive of it, recently labelling it “a very stupid movie”.
But in terms of understanding the director’s output, it has its place – not only with its unconventional, darkly comic subject matter (a soon-to-be-father driven to the edge by a barking dog in his apartment block becomes a serial pooch-killer), but in featuring an early performance from Doona Bae – an actress he would go on to work with again later in his career, and who went on to have her own Hollywood crossover in her work with the Wachowskis. Still, if Barking Dogs is scruffier and scrappier than the rest of Bong’s work, its barbed laughs and the early ambition of its filmmaker has cultivated a fanbase – even if that doesn’t include the director himself.
Can I watch it in the UK?
Not currently – you’ll have to import a Region 1 DVD.
Memories Of Murder (2003)
If it’s widely underseen this side of the Atlantic (see why further down), Memories Of Murder marked a considerable step up from Barking Dogs, acclaimed as one of the greatest serial killer movies ever made. It’s often mentioned in the same breath as Zodiac, and it’s easy to see why – not only does it focus on the crimes of a real-life murderer (a series of strangulations that occurred between 1986 and 1991 in the Gyeonggi Province of South Korea), but at the time of making the film the killer remained uncaught. Like David Fincher’s film about the obsessive attempts to crack the Zodiac killer, Memories Of Murder focuses on the detectives reckoning with the dawning futility of their investigation.
The film marked Bong’s first collaboration with Song Kang-ho, who went on to star in several of the director’s later films – here he plays the smirking local cop who clashes with Kim Sang-kyung’s city detective, each making rival attempts to find the killer. If the film sympathises with the police and the psychological weight of their desperation to catch the culprit, it also addresses the mistakes they made that meant a thorough investigation became all that more difficult. As for the real-life case, it was only recently solved in late 2019, when the murderer confessed to his crimes.
Can I watch it in the UK?
Not easily. The film received a UK DVD release years back, but it’s since gone out of print – meaning any existing copies are tricky to track down and fetch an eye-watering price. Fingers crossed it gets picked up for a new home entertainment release soon.
The Host (2006)
Two years before the Cloverfield alien rained destruction on Manhattan, Director Bong gave us the defining movie monster of the ‘00s, unleashing a chemically-enhanced overgrown tadpole-fish (complete with prehensile tail and ravenous jaws) on Seoul. The Host was his first major crossover hit – a rampaging creature feature that, like its central mutant monster, is a thrilling mash-mash of unexpected elements. In a none-more-Bong genre blend, sci-fi horror sits alongside family drama, with Song Kang-ho’s slacker dad Park Gang-du launching a rescue mission when his young daughter is snatched by the creature, venturing out with his father, professional archer sister (played by Doona Bae), and former student activist brother to bring her back.
Beyond that, The Host is infused with knockabout comedy (one tragic funeral scene dissolves into a farcical display of OTT grief) and lashings of political commentary: the film opens with an American military scientist instructing his Korean co-worker to drain hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde into the Han river (based on a real news report), while later in the film the Korean government and American military quarantine the site of the monster attack on spurious, unsubstantiated claims that the creature is the host of a deadly virus. Most importantly, it’s a monster movie that more than delivers on popcorn thrills, even eschewing the Jaws rule of saving the monster reveal for the final act, Instead Bong shows off his river-beast surprisingly early and in broad-daylight in a ballsy, gripping attack sequence delivered with total confidence.
Planning a trip to Seoul anytime soon? Visit Yeouido Han River Park to visit a five-tonne colourful statue of the 'Gwoemul' monster from The Host.
Can I watch it in the UK?
Yes! It’s widely available on DVD, Blu-ray, and on digital HD to buy now.
Mother (2009)
Not to be confused with Darren Aronofsky’s head-spinning melodrama of the same name, Bong’s Mother saw the director follow up his monster movie with a fresh take on the whodunnit – one that casts an older Korean woman as its amateur sleuth. Kim Hye-ja stars as the unnamed mother of the title, an unlicensed acupuncturist and devoted – perhaps obsessive – parent to son Yoon Do-joon, who has learning difficulties. When a young woman is discovered dead in their rural town, the killing is pinned on Do-joon by a manipulative and uncaring local police force with minimal evidence. Convinced that her son – unable to adequately extricate himself from the situation due to his learning disability – is innocent, she turns detective to solve the murder herself and free him from jail.
From its hypnotic opening (a mesmerising shot of Mother dancing in a field, later given an eerie new context), Bong conjures a compelling narrative with a rich atmosphere, thickening the plot as the investigation continues and Do-joon remembers more about the night of the murder. A slow-building thriller that still delivers sequences of high tension, with an enthralling performance from Kim, capped off with a gut-punch final reel.
Can I watch it in the UK?
Yes – it’s available on DVD and on iTunes in HD, though sadly not on UK Blu-ray.
Snowpiercer (2013)
It might be Bong’s first English-language film, but nothing about Snowpiercer feels toned down or commercialised. Based on a French graphic novel, the satirical dystopian sci-fi imagines a dire future in which the climate-ravaged Earth has frozen over, and the surviving dregs of society live on a high-speed train (the Snowpiercer of the title) that rattles across the icy wasteland in perpetual motion. At the front of the train are the ‘haves’, living in relative luxury, and at the back are the ‘have-nots’, living in squalor and planning an uprising. It’s a simple but strange set-up – and that’s before you factor in Tilda Swinton playing a buck-toothed Thatcher-esque nightmare with a thick Yorkshire accent.
It’s not just Swinton taking a radical route here – in the lead role of tortured revolutionary Curtis Everett, you’ll find Chris Evans going several shades darker than he ever did as Steve Rogers. A disturbing monologue he delivers in the final act is horrendously evocative, and Everett doesn’t hesitate to kill in his mission to reach the front of the train and seize control of the all-powerful engine, teaming up with train security expert Namgoong Minsoo (played, once again, by frequent Bong collaborator Song Kang-ho) to get there. But the real star here is the train itself – each subsequent head-spinning carriage portraying new shades of privilege and luxury, from a squeaky-clean primary school to a Sea Life aquarium, to a bass-thumping nightclub. It’s a truly trippy setting for a dark, wild, action-packed sci-fi-thriller.
Fun fact: a scene depicting a fish being gutted was threatened with the chop by executive producer Harvey Weinstein. Bong, a big fan of the shot, asked that it remain in as a tribute to his fisherman father, to which Weinstein agreed. The director later admitted that was “a fucking lie”, adding: “My father was not a fisherman.”
Can I watch it in the UK?
At long last, yes. It went unreleased here for years, but finally received a digital release in late 2018. It’s currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
Okja (2017)
The tale of a girl and her beloved super-pig, Okja is like E.T., if the bad guys actually wanted to eat E.T. Bong’s second English-language work is one of his most vibrant genre-melds – beginning as a cutesy romp in which Korean teen Mija (a grounded and charming Ahn Seo-hyun) frolics with her porcine pal Okja in the forest, before shifting gear into a pointed eco-political adventure-thriller with a thick satirical streak. Because as it turns out, the super-pigs have been bred by the Mirando Corporation as a new sustainable meat source, meaning Okja is up for the chop – unless Mija and activist group the Animal Liberation Front can get there first.
Okja finds Bong at his most adventurous, taking the visual boldness of Snowpiercer to even greater heights – cranking up the colours and the cuteness, getting Jake Gyllenhaal to dial it up way past 11 as zany TV zoologist Johnny Wilcox, and then pivoting into some brutally bleak territory as the plot progresses. One sequence in the final act might be single-handedly responsible for the huge increase in veganism in recent years – tissues are recommended. As with The Host, the satire here is full of grey areas, the ALF being far from clear-cut heroes. It’s a heady tonal juggling act – plus you get Bong reuniting with Tilda Swinton, here playing the deliciously callous corporate CEO Lucy Mirando, working alongside a stellar ensemble including Steven Yeun, Paul Dano, Giancarlo Esposito and Shirley Henderson.
Can I watch it in the UK?
Yes! It’s a Netflix film, so you’ll find it streaming there.
Parasite (2020)
Finally, the film that everyone’s talking about. The less you know about Parasite going in, the better – but suffice to say, it’s the culmination of Bong’s career so far. After two English-language films, it finds him back in his native South Korea, once again spinning together genres into something near-undefinable but supremely entertaining. The story of a struggling family (led, once again, by Song Kang-ho) who find a high-risk way of making ends meet, it’s layered with the social commentary that has been an ever-present thread through his filmography. After the bold sci-fi of Snowpiercer and Okja, Parasite is more in the vein of Mother and Memories Of Murder, but feels distinct even from those films – it’s a darkly comic suspense thriller that racks up an entire set of dominos, then reveals that they’re stacked on top a house of cards, and makes the audience wait for it all to come crashing down.
It’s the precision that stands out – from the screenwriting, to the framing, to the editing, Parasite is meticulously crafted, unfolding with absolute perfect pacing. Not only has it attracted the attention of the Oscars, but it’s been a major hit with worldwide audiences too, the sort of film that most viewers would struggle not to enjoy. Anyone willing to, as Bong himself says, “overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles” is in for a treat.
If you’ve seen Parasite already – or you’re simply too curious to resist – you can read our review right here.
Can I watch it in the UK?
Yes – it’s out in cinemas right now.