Project Wolf Hunting

Project Wolf Hunting (Neugdaesanyang) (2022)

Runtime: 122 minutes

Directed by: Hongsun Kim

Starring: Seo In-Guk, Dong-Yoon Jang, Jung So-Min, Gwi-Hua Choi, Dong Il-Sung

From: Some companies who I won't even name here; I wasn't a fan of this movie

You know, I need to put my foot down and just not watch films like this no matter their online buzz. Most of you reading this won't have known this but long ago I discussed various “extreme” movies of the early 2000's and turns out, I didn't like any of them. That includes all those French Extreme horror movies, every movie in Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy (which is why I've never seen any of his other films no matter him turning to ripping off... er, I mean “be inspired” by Hitchcock) and haven't seen most torture porn movies or anything from certain European/associated with Europe directors-I'm looking at you, Haneke, Noe and von Trier!-even the films that aren't controversial in their filmographies.

I realize many on Letterboxd will vehemently disagree with the above paragraph, but at this point in my life, I'd honestly not even bother with such “difficult” directors or those movies that are “challenging” or are mostly based on shock value, as I feel Project Wolf Hunting was. What those movies do just isn't appealing to me so I'd rather be entertained by pictures that don't try to be “transgressive” or what have you. Personally, this was an ugly, unpleasant movie full of vulgarities, no character I could possibly give a damn about (even the “good guys” transporting the criminals from the Philippines to South Korea via cargo ship are mostly lousy human beings), idiotic character moments & the absurd over the top violence where EVERY would inflicted resulted in gallons of blood being spilled... some of you may love it, but personally I could not possibly have cared less.

Heck, this quickly became boring as there bizarrely was no tension as the prisoners began to riot; that didn't even change once something truly preposterous enters the plot and rips off its limbs. As the sound design didn't even work for me, the movie was just a massive disappointment and wasted what could have been a fun scenario. This doesn't exactly inspire further motivation into exploring was the Korean cinema scene is like... some of the films from the early 2000's are great yet I was burned by this and really burned by Carter, which was FAR more of a nightmare and had many more problems than this did.

Many of you who are interested in this will likely enjoy it far more than I did; good luck to you all. Personally, if I never again have to take that long agonizing walk of watching something that mainly serves (IMO) as an endurance test, it means that many right choices were made in the future.