In a somewhat disappointing filmic year in Korea, in London we could nevertheless celebrate the fact that a handful of the latest big-budget Korean movies continue to have limited-scope theatrical releases. In 2024 we got director Heo Myung-haeng’s contribution to the Roundup franchise, and the final instalment of Kim Han-min’s Yi Sun-shin trilogy, plus Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma. With the first two of those titles you got what you expected and then moved on. Exhuma though was more consequential, combining themes of shamanism, the supernatural and Japanese colonial oppression. The movie continued director Jang’s track record of supernatural thrillers (his previous features include The Priests and Svaha: The Sixth Finger) and appeared on many K-movie watchers’ lists of top movies of the year.
Curzon cinemas also offered us Jason Yu’s excellent Sleep (2023 – one of the late Lee Sun-kyun’s last films) following on from its screening at the Raindance festival, which like Exhuma introduced shamanism as a theme. Even better, July Jung’s second feature Next Sohee got a belated UK release, for which I was truly grateful as I managed to miss it when it screened at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival. Like her first movie (A Girl at My Door) this one addressed many social issues, focusing on the exploitation of school children on work experience, a topic which neither the schools nor local government officials want to confront as government funding is driven by school league tables which in turn depend on the number of internships.
At other mainstream festivals, BFI Flare included Yun Su-ik’s elusive but appealing Heavy Snow (2023) in its line-up, while the BFI London Film Festival showed one of Hong Sangsoo’s latest. Two arthouse cinemas had major seasons of Korean films: the ICA ended the year with a retrospective of Hong Sangsoo’s more recent (post-2010) films; while the BFI had a kaleidoscopic collection of movies from the Golden Age and late 90s / early noughties which annoyingly overlapped with the London Korean Film Festival and the busy run-up to Christmas. It was great to have the opportunity to revisit some old favourites, restored, on the big screen, but one wishes the season could have been at the start of the year when, with little else in the cultural calendar, we could have paid it more attention.
As for the two big festivals that take place in the insanely busy October / November season… we didn’t manage to get to any of LEAFF‘s Korean screenings because of diary clashes, while our attendance at the London Korean Film Festival was severely restricted for similar reasons. But of the ones I got to see, I was:
- completely turned off by the low-budget slasher The Guest (Dir: Yeon Je-gwang, 2023)
- bored by the feel-good cheerleading movie Victory (Dir: Park Beom-su, 2024) that was the gala opening (my bad: as a general rule I avoid feel-good sporting movies, but sometimes find that Korean ones have some remediating features. This one had some nice shots of Geoje Island, but that was not enough to rescue it), and by Alienoid 2 (Dir: Choi Dong-hoon, 2024. The first one had all the nice surprises, after which the second one really has nowhere to go and nothing new to offer)
- gently charmed by The Noisy Mansion (Dir: Lee Lu-da, 2024) and Sisters on the Road (Dir: Boo Ji-young, 2008)
- delighted by comedy-horror Handsome Guys (Dir: Nam Dong-Hyub, 2024).
Fittingly for a year in which Korean literature has been so much to the fore, LKFF’s schedule included two adaptations of recent novels, both of which had LGBTQ+ themes: Lee Mi-rang’s Concerning My Daughter followed Kim Hye-jin’s novel quite closely, while director E.oni turned the focus away from the male lead in Sang Young Park’s Booker-shortlisted Love in the Big City, instead foregrounding the relationships of the female lead. This was the movie that closed the festival, and was a nicely sympathetic and almost uplifting note on which to close. I’d watch that one again, along with Handsome Guys, but overall it was not an outstanding year for Korean films.
