Memories of Murder

Though it was Parasite that made him a household name, with its ‘one inch barrier’-crossing Best Picture win, Bong Joon Ho had been making masterful crime films throughout the previous two decades. Before Snowpiercer and Mother, there was this: a 2003 procedural thriller with an edge of real darkness. And unlike Zodiac, another cult hit based on a real-life murder case, this one had a fascinating extratextual epilogue; DNA evidence finally identified the culprit in 2019.

In the late 1980s, as with the real case, bodies of murdered women begin to appear in a small South Korean town. It’s a grim case, and Bong talked at the time about his efforts to tread carefully out of respect to the victims’ relatives. Because of this, and the absence of a real murderer for inspiration, the film chooses instead to focus on the methods and struggles of the police departments. This begins as the bungling errors of small-town officers not used to the gravity of the situation, and morphs into drama as experienced detectives from Seoul are brought in to help. It’s dour and gripping, but the conviction in certain set-pieces show the vision of a director with promise.

Max King