Project Wolf Hunting

An insanely brutal ride from South Korea, where the intensity of the violence reaches a new, undiscovered level! Project Wolf Hunting begins as Con Air crossed with Under Siege with an escort of the worst criminals from South Korea to the Philippines with a cargo ship. A downright excellent premise for any genre, it was entertaining before the film was even announced. To my surprise, however, I got something slightly different than I expected. I was expecting a classic martial arts brawler on a boat with prisoners and cops, which is true for maybe the first hour or so. The second hour, however, leans into Sci-Fi and into a pretty explosive slasher/splatter, which is definitely an unexpected development, but positively received by me. If they had dared to go straight into horror we would have the genre flick of the year, an attractive setting, dark atmosphere and proper gore, but it's still perfect. The film doesn't quite have A-parameters, though. The director isn't A-list caliber, he's done rather more mediocre Korean flicks, there are no stars, and the story certainly doesn't play a major role, which I don't mind, but it's a bit unusual for South Korea, where filmmakers here have absolute freedom and the desire to break free from the chains, because elsewhere they probably wouldn't get away with it. The film has solid visuals and the there's no downright main character for the viewer to root for, there's a bunch of bad guys, one top villain who gets replaced by another top villain, and the bad guys make for a good movie, so why not really. The film is very action packed, has an incredible pace, revels in violence, blood spurts from every human orifice, fountains of blood during knife play are par for the course, and there aren’t even ten minutes where someone doesn’t die – the body-count is so high. They also introduce biological weapons, so we have a mutant that has the strength of three men and he rips limbs and skin off people like they're paper. All great practical effects, high level gore, no amateurism, top quality stuff. It could be compared to the recent Taiwanese flick The Sadness, but this perhaps has even more going for it. The only shame here is that there wasn't some properly kinky mass pape culminating in a shocking climax, it would have put the film in the top 10 of all time. There are a couple of minor twists towards the end that may lay the groundwork for a possible sequel, and I hope it is made! There was also a bit of my expected martial arts with knives in the finale and the kills are really delicious. However, those expecting shootouts or outright fights will be disappointed, it's more about the drastic and insane kills. The most brutal film of the year and the best South Korean film of the year without a doubt. 9/10. (09.11.2022)

In the context of the genre, it's a high standard, a really solid meat grinder. It's just a shame that the filmmakers gave full priority to the action and didn't exploit the claustrophobic bowels of the freighter where the bloody inferno takes place to play up the horror atmosphere as well. I would have been quite possibly thrilled with that. (06.11.2022)