Busy Holiday Season Leaves Viewers Spoilt for Choice
With the ink still warm in the record books for this summer’s box office, the Korean film industry is heading straight back into action for one of the busiest Chuseok holiday seasons of recent memory. Five star-driven titles will vie for glory on the charts as families around the country gather for the festivities.
Chuseok, Korea’s Thanksgiving holiday, is one of the two biggest annual celebrations in the country, along with the Lunar New Year. This year, the holiday will take place from Sunday, September 23 to Tuesday 25, with Wednesday threw in as another day off by the government. In addition, National Foundation Day and Hangeul Proclamation Day will fall on Wednesday, October 3 and Tuesday, October 9, giving fall releases plenty of opportunities to draw in big crowds in 2018.
Among this fall’s five top titles are a new showdown between
HYUN Bin and
ZO In-sung, who went head to head during the Lunar New Year holiday in 2017 with
Confidential Assignment and
The King, the latest
Don LEE vehicle, last year’s Chuseok champ with
THE OUTLAWS, the final entry in a period drama trilogy and South Korea’s first ever period creature feature.
Monstrum - KIM Myung-min
Hoping to get a jump start on the holiday is
HUH Jong-ho’s third feature
Monstrum. Billed as Korea’s first ever period creature feature, the action-drama takes place during the Joseon Era against the background of a power struggle between the King and his prime minister, who attempts to weaken his reign by spreading rumors of a dangerous creature in the mountains. But when an ex-general is brought in to investigate the claims, it is discovered that there may be more credence to the tales that originally thought.
A reliable presence on screens for almost two decades, KIM, who plays the retired general, has led several films to box office success, including the disaster dramas
Deranged (2012) and
Pandora (2016) while also heading the popular period investigative action-comedy
Detective K series, which has spawned three installments from 2011 until this year.
KIM In-kwon (
The Tower, 2012) features as his right-hand man,
LEE Hye-ri of Kpop act Girl’s Day plays his daughter and
CHOI Woo-shik (
Okja, 2017) plays a royal officer who bands with them, while
LEE Gyoung-young (
The Battleship Island, 2017) is the scheming prime minister and
PARK Sung-woong (also in
The Great Battle this month), plays the prime minister’s evil captain.
FENGSHUI - CHO Seung-woo
This new period title ends an informal Joseon Era trilogy that began with
HAN Jae-rim’s
The Face Reader, a Chuseok release in 2013 and continued with the romantic comedy
The Princess and the Matchmaker earlier this year. Produced by
Jupiter Film, the thematic cycle featured stories inspired by the traditional practices of fortune-telling. To that end,
FENGSHUI is a Royal court succession drama centered around the all-important placement of a burial site, hence the title. Several factions come head to head in the Joseon Era as they try to take control of a propitious burial site, which will ensure the identity of the dynasty’s next two kings.
THE NEGOTIATION - SON Ye-jin & HYUN Bin
SON plays Chae-yoon, an ace hostage negotiator who is called to the scene when her supervisor is taken hostage. She must engage in a tense game with the vicious hostage-taker Tae-gu (HYUN), whose motivations she’s having difficulties to ascertain.
The Great Battle - ZO In-sung
Reportedly the year’s most expensive film, period siege epic
The Great Battle is the ambitious third feature of
KIM Kwang-sik, returning to theaters after the gangster romcom
My Dear Desperado (2010) and the media thriller
Tabloid Truth (2014). With dazzling effects and plenty of forwarding momentum, this latest period war film takes pages out of Hollywood hits such as
300 and
The Lord of the Rings.
Set in the year 645 AD,
The Great Battle focuses on the real siege of the Ansi Fortress, which held out for 88 days when it was besieged by the military forces of the Tang Empire. General Yang (played by ZO) leads his small loyal forces against an overwhelming larger foreign invader, while also trying to fend off an assassination attempt from home.
THE SOUL-MATE - Don LEE (aka MA Dong-seok)
LEE plays Jang-soo, a judo gym owner with a slippery moral code. That is until he meets Tae-jin, the ghost of a righteous police officer who pulls Jang-soo into a case.
THE SOUL-MATE comes from the mind of director
JO Won-hee, who previously made the hospital-set chamber revenge thriller
Enemy at the Dead End (2010). JO’s latest film, which plays up the fantastical and comedy factors, will be the last of this year’s Chuseok releases, as it opens on September 26, when the holidays begin to wind down.