From creepy folklore to gory boat-rides, K-horror cinema had a few stellar highlights in 2022. But what lies ahead for Korean genre cinema and the Korean movie industry itself? We discuss all this with K-drama and film critic Pierce Conran.
Guest: Pierce Conran, Drama Critic for South China Morning Post
Fear Has a New Face: Five Korean Horror Movies to Watch in 2022
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Produced by Joe McPherson, Shawn Morrissey, and Mia Roncati
Music by Soraksan
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MOVIES
- Urban Myth – Hong Won-ki
- A horror anthology of 10 short stories featuring real k-pop and k-movie stars
- Modern representation of classic ghost stories (lady in red, tooth worms, necromancy)
- Mainly focuses on culture of Korea and just abject terror
- The Witch: Part 2 (aka The Other One)- Park Hoo-jung
- Action, sci-fi horror- a gifted girl escapes and hides from a research facility
- Fourth highest grossing korean film of 2022
- Seire- Park Kang
- Based on the 21 day superstition that a newborn shouldn’t go outside except the death of an ex-girlfriend causes bizarre events
- Debuted at Busan International Film Festival in 2021
- It seems to take a cliche horror genre and subverts through the breaking of cultural taboos and the blurring of real and unreal
- Umma- Iris K. Shim (American Production)
- A mix of Korean and English
- Wanting to live away from electronics, a korean immigrant and her daughter, yet their life is turned around when the woman receives the ashes of her mother
- Following the trend of intergenerational trauma turned to horror?
- Carter- Jung Byung-gil
- A seemingly new mix of horror and action
- A zombie movie with crazy stunts and athletic prowess by the main actor, extremely violent
- New Normal- Jung Bum- shik
- A record 4 days in Seoul, 2022 of chaos that has never been recorded in mankind before
- It shows the “every day fears” and anxieties of both gen-z and millennials hidden in common spaces
- Might be more of a “black comedy” than “true” horror