Having seen Oldboy 올드보이 (2003) and Parasite 기생충 (2019), I feared my standards for Korean cinema might have been set too high. But instead, this film has managed to live up to the artistry of the previous two, as far as general direction and photography is concerned.

The movie follows a small village police sergeant in South Korea, who is forced to face a nefarious curse that progressively effects his fellow villagers and then, unfortunately, his own family. Our quasi-anti-hero guy is notoriously cowardly and lazy though, which makes for some really funny scenes.

In general, the humor from this movie is one of its strongest points. The stark contrast of seriously gory and gruesome, the emotional and the straight up goofy -in a good way- scenes is no small feat to master. All the actors do a phenomenal job here with this balancing act, especially our protagonist. Narrative-wise, the smoothness of these transitions, both thematically and visually is remarkable.

A negative that might be apparent here is the runtime, the film has many twists and turns that are both important and lengthy, however I can't help feeling the whole thing loses speed halfway through before picking back up towards the end.

What is really impressive overall in Asian cinema and in this movie too for me is how artful the delivery of it all is. The movie just plain *looks good*. It looks impressive in a lot of scenes, not in a way of how a monster truck looks, but in how a nice painting does. really makes you look of more you don't think is possible in western movies. Good steak vs McDonalds type thing.. [insert more pretentious jokes here].