Pandora

In a rural Korean town built around an ageing nuclear plant, Jae-hyeok works there and wants out. An earthquake strikes. The cooling system fails and the reactor starts heating. The government first minimises the event, then is late with the evacuation order. The subject is not the disaster but the withholding of information. The first half shows the maintenance failures at the plant and how warnings were turned away; in the second, the crisis committee delays the truth in the name of avoiding panic, and that decision kills people. The form is large-scale disaster cinema: explosions, escapes, crowded evacuation sequences. The emotional strand runs through a family and the register rises noticeably in the final section. The production landed in the middle of Korea's most intense argument about nuclear power. For a viewer living there, the plant design and the town's position were familiar; the safety of actual plants was being publicly debated while the film played. Netflix released it internationally. Park Jung-woo directs. Kim Nam-gil plays Jae-hyeok and Kim Myung-min the plant director. Who it is for: viewers who like disaster films and stories of institutional negligence. Who it is not for: anyone who dislikes emotional pressure; the last half hour runs continuously at a high pitch.