The Chronicles of Evil

Detective Choi, about to be promoted, gets into a fight with a man in a taxi at the end of the celebration and kills him by accident. To protect his career he disposes of the body. The next morning the same body is found hanging from a crane in the middle of the city; someone saw him, kept it, and put it on display. Choi takes charge of the investigation and has to protect himself and find whoever did this at the same time. Baek Woon-hak inverts the classic procedural: the detective is the killer and the audience knows it from the start. The tension comes not from solving the crime but from when he will be caught. The narrative shifts onto a revenge line in the second half. Son Hyun-joo plays Choi, with Don Lee and Park Seo-jun in the cast. Who it's for: Viewers who like Korean crime films, suspense built from the criminal's vantage, and dark-toned genre cinema. Who it's not for: The violence is dense and the explanation at the end leans too hard on coincidence. The moral frame is also left murky.