Moth­er

Knit­ting. Nag­ging. Mak­ing your tea. Just three things that Moth­er isn’t about. Fol­low­ing his cult mon­ster-mash The Host – the high­est-gross­ing film in South Kore­an his­to­ry – writer/​director Bong Joon-ho’s new movie is an elu­sive genre hyphen­ate: hor­ror-com­e­dy-mys­tery-thriller. Don’t be fooled. It might look more reserved than a B‑flick about a giant flesh-eat­ing tad­pole, but Moth­er is just as dark, grip­ping and primal.

Bong knocks us off bal­ance right from the start with a vio­lent slap­stick hit-and-run acci­dent in a rur­al Kore­an vil­lage. The sto­ry revolves around the idiot of that vil­lage: 27-year-old Do-joon (heart­throb Won Bin) and his odd­ball sin­gle moth­er, played by Kore­an TV’s beloved matri­arch Kim Hye-ja.

Dark­ness falls quick­ly, as a promis­cu­ous school­girl is beat­en to death by an unknown killer who leaves her body dan­gling from the roof of an aban­doned build­ing. Afflict­ed by a gold­fish mem­o­ry, sweet, sim­ple man-child Do-joon can’t recall a thing. But giv­en his vio­lent explo­sions (don’t call him a ​‘retard’), any­thing could have happened.

Yanked for­ward by sud­den shocks, the plot­ting feels a lit­tle dis­tract­ed by var­i­ous side­tracks that pull us away from its title char­ac­ter. But once Hye-ja turns detec­tive to find the real mur­der­er, her mater­nal instincts go into over­drive and Moth­er quick­ly adopts the eerie vibe of Bong’s ser­i­al-thriller mas­ter­piece Mem­o­ries of Murder.

Putting a fresh spin on the thriller genre by using a mid­dle-aged woman as its nar­ra­tive engine, Mother’s spe­cial vibe derives from the uncer­tain knowl­edge that Hye-ja will do absolute­ly any­thing to prove her son’s inno­cence – whether he’s inno­cent or not. Reg­u­lar­ly wrong-foot­ing your expec­ta­tions, this por­trait of skewed matri­archy slow­ly untwists with a queasy black humour that syncs per­fect­ly with the vivid performances.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, it’s effort­less. Wrapped up in a tremen­dous sound design and styl­ish cin­e­matog­ra­phy, Bong’s film is at its best reveal­ing both shock­ing sur­pris­es and sad secrets at a mea­sured pace.

The film ends as sur­re­al­ly as it begins, nev­er quite hit­ting the emo­tion­al tragedy that the direc­tor cap­tured in Mem­o­ries of Mur­der, but con­firm­ing him as the only man seri­ous­ly vying with Park Chan-wook for the title of Kore­an cinema’s most tal­ent­ed dark master.