A Lifetime of Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho

This brooding psychological crime thriller introduced writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to an international audience and was an influence on the wave of Japanese horror films that were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Koji Yakusho stars as Takabe, a Tokyo detective assigned to a string of violent murders carried out by people with seemingly no motive. While struggling to cope with his wife’s schizophrenia, Takabe find his investigation leading him to the enigmatic Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), a former psychology student dealing with amnesia. Kurosawa uses thriller and horror elements to create an exploration of the existential that is fraught with tension.