Everyone's getting paranoid in the village and signs near the border warn residents to watch for infiltrators, the inference being clear! Local police chief Beom-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and hunter Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) find a huge cow or bull on a rural road, which has been brutally mutilated. The locals start a hunt, convinced at first that it's a bear, before ruling that out in favour of a tiger!
They are alerted to chaos in the middle of the village where most people live and the shops reside. It's chaotic because people are being mauled, killed, maimed and disfigured by what they still think at this stage to be a tiger. Our police chief bravely goes on the hunt, assisted by various people along the way, running through the streets and leaping into buildings while dodging flying debris and victims, with the perpetrator always just out of sight. In fact, we're teased for 45 minutes into the film before we start to get a peep at the alien creature - but the tension is often handled well.
Our chief's sidekick at the station is Sung-ae (Hoyeon), a spunky young woman who turns up on the scene in a police car packed with weapons and ammunition to help him stop this creature once and for all. We then enter a stretch of the film where the pair are in the police car, blazing at high speed through the streets, pursued at equal speed by the creature as they lean out of the windows to try and shoot it! I didn't time it, but it felt like nearly half an hour of breakneck car chasing and shooting!
The creature is an oddly shaped, giant 10-foot-tall alien warrior with some features that look almost human. Sung-ae manages during the car chase to blow off half of the creature's leg, which slows it down a bit, but the village is destroyed because of all this - with most of the population dead or in the local makeshift hospital space!
While all the above is going on, Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and a posse of his hunters venture into the forested mountains, where they are conducting their own series of chases as we discover that our alien wrecking the village wasn't alone. But enough of the spoilers, enjoy the unfolding for yourself! I will say, however, that two of them are played by some familiar non-Korean names. The pair are even married in real life - J’aur is played by Alicia Vikander and Ma’veyyo by Michael Fassbender. So there's that to watch out for.
The film switches rapidly from a straightforward tale of monster-invasion/hunting into a dark comedy of errors, in fact. Other villagers come forward with new information about what they have seen in the woods over the previous weeks, which pads out the story and gives the reveals and outcomes some substance. And there is an explainer at the end (as well as a cliffhanger of sorts, leaving the door open for a sequel), bonkers as it might be!
There are also some half-arsed "messages" in the mix about humans, relationships, power struggles, rage, family values, racism, selfishness and selflessness, as well as understanding and kindness. Not that it's in any way soppy! It's very much a high-octane survival actioner with explosions, crashes, death, gore, blood, decapitations and body-horror bits that will keep a person on the edge of their seat for much of the duration - and yes, for me, that long runtime flew by, even with subtitles slowing my brain down a bit!
Having said all that, it is quite an absurd plot with plenty of inconsistencies along the way for those who want to pick at it, but it is also very funny at times. For example, there's an unfeasibly long dialogue in the middle of the film when a man describes his recent experience in the woods when he had seen some of the above, but was desperate for a shit and couldn't do it while trying to keep quiet! So there is plenty of good, nutty entertainment all round!
In terms of acting, everyone played their part and played it well. The main leads did an excellent and absurdly convincing job! On production notes, it seems that Na Hong-jin spent years developing the film with primary backing from Plus M Entertainment and it was mostly filmed across South Korea. A final word goes to cinematographer Hong Kyeong-pyo (also the cinematographer of Parasite and Burning) for having made the most of the landscape and working with the team to make the special effects somewhat convincing too. Great film. Really enjoyed it. It's only at cinemas just now, but apparently coming to streaming in the UK in about a month from the time of writing.
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