The class divide gets another righteous rogering in Wall to Wall (now on Netflix), a dark-comic Korean thriller that might owe some royalties to Bong Joon-ho. Kim Tae-joon (Unlocked) and Sharon S. Park direct this story that might be best described as a real-estate conspiracy, starring Kang Ha-neul (Squid Game) as a have-not who gets caught up in capitalist games that he just can’t win no matter how much he sweats. And sweats. And sweats. After a while, you might feel damp, too, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
The Gist: Woo-sung’s (Kang) idealized version of a happily ever after is owning his own apartment in Seoul – but you know and I know that happily ever afters are a figment of childish imaginations. It’s 2021, and he’s a cubicle drone who maxes out a loan to buy a place for more than a billion won (that’s $700,000-plus American) only to find out that the price was jacked up even higher at the last minute. He buys it anyway. It’s a smart investment, real estate. It never loses value, right? Well. Three years later, the market has dipped and Woo-sung is broke and despondent. He lies face-down on the floor, surrounded by garbage he’s too depressed to clean up, in the dark with the air conditioning off because he can’t afford the bill. He’s “house poor.” His dinner will be snacks stolen from the office and scarfed down before he hops on his bike for his evening gig delivering food. All this, for a 275-square-foot shoebox apartment.
And it’s hot in there. Woo-sung constantly sweats. To top it off, he has noisy upstairs neighbors. Thump thump bump, all the time, all day, all night. His downstairs neighbors think he’s the culprit, and leave reams of orange sticky notes on his door asking him to keep it down. He complains to the building super and nothing gets done. He tries to explain himself to the downstairs neighbor and the woman doesn’t seem to want to listen. He goes up a level and gets a not me from the guy, who claims it’s from the next level up, so Woo-sung goes up there and gets another not me, and another, until he reaches the “resident representative” in the penthouse, who explains that the building is cheaply made and the sound just travels down the load-bearing wall. The sound that seems to have no source whatsoever. The maddening sound. Thump thump bump. The beating of the hideous heart!
Meanwhile, Woo-sung’s coworker tells him about an investment scam with an 800 percent ROI. Yes, 800 percent. It’s just a little insider trading, no big deal! Is it too good to be true, or so deeply corrupt that it’s absolutely believably true in this hell society? Who can tell? Woo-sung doesn’t want anything to do with that, but he’s still sweating sweating sweating and hearing thump thump bump and he sells the apartment and takes a hit on the price but knows that 800 percent of that would sure be nice. He has to wait until the value of the investment peaks at precisely the right moment and then click SELL so he obsessively watches the bar graph tick up up up pant pant pant sweat sweat sweat thump thump bump. This is what penny-slot guys do when they want to be thousand-dollar-a-hand high rollers. But it sure seems like there are mechanisms in place preventing penny-slotters from ever being high rollers, vast secret conspiracies that assure us that property values are everything and nothing ever changes for the middle class, who should just get used to hearing thump thump bump for the rest of their miserable-ass lives.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Parasite would like a word. Same with mother!, for those couple of moments of high-intensity madness. And maybe Fight Club, too.
Performance Worth Watching: Kang is in nearly every shot of this movie, and it’s an oddly physical performance that ably skirts the hem of slapstick comedy.
Memorable Dialogue: “Like I told you, noise between floors is a human problem.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Woo-sung is infected with the disease of capitalism, which has rendered him a sad, pathetic, desperate schmoe destined to be napalmed to death by his own yearning for material wealth. Of course, the stock scam is ironic because when the number hits 815 at 8:15 on 8/15, he cashes in at 815 percent, and that date is Liberation Day. Three guesses whether it works out for him, and the first two don’t count – and no, that’s not a spoiler, because when this particular plot development reaches resolution, the movie’s only halfway over, and we still have thump thump bump to deal with.
So Wall to Wall has no shortage of ideas as it rages against the machine in a slightly absurdist manner. Kim and Park crib some hyperbole from Bong’s distinctive stylebook, but forgo some of his signature Looney Tunesisms for a comparatively blander approach. The intent here is to make us feel the stifling closeness of Woo-sung’s apartment, to enhance the claustrophobia as the walls close in on his sanity and his financial well-being. It works for the most part, although the film’s ambition eventually becomes a thematic muddle as a story of paranoid desperation leads to some not-unexpected physical violence via a variety of logic-defying twists and turns that seem contrived to be unpredictable. Eventually, we get the idea that greed is unbecoming no matter who you are, and that very few reap the rewards of late capitalism. It’s a nightmarish endeavor that admirably sticks to Woo-sung’s miserable point-of-view, but it’s debatable whether it’s worth enduring the film’s many unpleasantries to suss out its cynical message.
Our Call: Sure, Wall to Wall comes a bit too close to being a Parasite clone, but you have to respect its ambition and relatively versatile visual storytelling. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.