Talchul: Project Silence

The South Koreans are masters at making riveting and vicious crime dramas and action thrillers. I have been binge watching them for months now, BUT this is not one of those great Korean movies, this is actually below average...

The bad: the special effects look silly. The attacking dogs are meant to be frightening looking, but they actually look laughable, because of cheap CGI. The WHOLE plot of this movie, the WHOLE core of this movies' existence goes down the drain, because these wild dogs look so incredibly SILLY and fake.

NO thrill. NO riveting action. NO good drama or acting. NO jokes. This is quite bad for Korean movie standards. Not a total flop for sure, but way below what they are capable of producing in South Korea. Such a pity!

Literally this movie is just a bunch of CGI dogs running on a bridge and people acting hysterically. For the genre, it was poorly executed, seemed more focused on the CGI than the story and the action. I was bored out of my mind, as it completely did not resonate with me at all. I don't care about the characters and the actions sequences were predictable and cliche, bereft of any creativity or excitement.

For a Korean film, this is an extreme disappointment as Koreans are excellent in making movies that really move the heart, either in comedy or tragedy. I kinda wish they did zombies instead of dogs.

So, it's March and I have finally been able to see this movie, since it never released in the US in August of 2024. Tried buying on Ebay Oct 2024 (failed, b/c the dvd English subtitles never worked... only had Chinese subtitles). Amazon forced the English dub version on their streaming services in February 2025...and I would rather watch a movie in its native language b/c the actors are giving it their all and you can tell... So after trying to see this since 2024 (8 months later), I'll give it atleast a 6/10. For some reason the complexity of the characters lacked emotional connection to the audience. I didn't feel sad or anxious when someone died. But the action scenes and comedy, kept me going. Though I enjoy action flicks and awesome K-Movies to the core.

In this tense film, a father and daughter are heading to Incheon Airport (South Korea). But weather conditions suddenly become so bad one can't distinguish anything right in front of them. Then a thick fog causes a massive pile-up, but there is a far more concerning threat. The situation worsens when mutant military dogs accidentally break out of their cages, leaving the people trapped in a life-or-death situation. So, people stranded on a bridge being relentlessly chased by a pack of dogs. The savage creatures were born from a military experiment, and being transferred in the utmost secrecy, are let loose. The bloody dogs go after them, causing wreak havoc and massacre.

Premiered at Cannes 2023, this is a fast-paced science fiction survival horror thriller, set on a bridge on the verge of collapse and a pack of mutant animals -lousily made in G. G. I- attacking here and there. So-so but passable film that represents a crossover of genres: ¨Horror¨, ¨Thriller¨, ¨Survival drama¨, ¨Sci-Fi¨ with Echoes, creatures born from a military experiment called Project Silence, and ¨Disaster¨ with several spectacular scenes invoving the bridge catastrophe including a spectacular and risked rescue that will have you on the edge of your seat. There are creepy mutated dogs with military purports that attack victims, which is a combination of terror and Sci-Fi, and following the tradition of assassin dogs in films like Dracula's Dog (1977) by Albert Band, A Dog Called... Vengeance (1977) by Antonio Isasi, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978) by Curtis Harrington and Rottweiler by (2004) by Brian Yuzna.

It was one of the last projects worked on by the late Lee Sun-kyun, star of the Oscar-winning ¨Parasite¨. Despite his burgeoning fame, Lee turned to low-budget arthouse films to polish his acting caliber. Night and Day, Lost in the Mountains, Oki's Movie, Nobody's Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi were all directed by Hong Sang-soo, an auteur renowned for his realistic portrayal of ordinary lives. Lee was best known for his roles in the thriller Helpless (2012), romantic comedy All About My Wife (2012), and crime/black comedy A Hard Day (2014). In October 2023, it was revealed that Lee was booked for internal investigation over suspected drug use. As a result, he voluntarily dropped out of No Way Out, an upcoming thriller drama serial which just started its production days before the revelation of his alleged drug use. On December 27, 2023, Lee was found dead at the age of 48 inside his car at a park in central Seoul. Police responded to the scene after receiving a 112 report In the passenger seat was a charcoal briquette, commonly used in suicides in South Korea. The motion picture was uneven but professionally directed by Kim Tae-gon (Familyhood, The Sunshine Boys, Short! Short! Short!, The Pot). Rating: 5.5/10. Mediocre but acceptable and passable.

Obviously a riff on the dog eat dog quote ... so no pun intended. This is a "catastrophe movie" (if you remember or have seen some of them way back in the day, mostly in the 70s and maybe 80s, though coming back from time to time, San Andreas one of the "newer" ones) ... packed with some bite ... I mean dogs, to spice things up ... not in a eating them ... I won't even go there with a joke ... especially because the dogs are the ones attacking.

The story is quite paper thin ... but there is one side character ... when he is introduced I didn't really like him ... he is quite sleazy and tries to rip our main character off ... but later he becomes a really fun comical character who almost single-handedly saves the movie.

Characters doing stuff that does not make much sense ... but suspend your disbelief and you'll be good I reckon ... this is about having fun with a ridiculous idea ... nothing more, nothing less.