The Best Serial Killer Movie Ever Made is Streaming Online for Free
I’m pretty sure Bong Joon-ho is my favorite contemporary filmmaker (if my gargantuan coffee table book dedicated to his filmography is anything to go by). In the west, Bong Joon-ho is probably best known among general audiences for his Best Picture winning Parasite, one of the most incisive genre hybrids of all time. Part horror movie, part comedy, Parasite exceeds the sum of its disparate parts to emerge a genuine classic. There’s a reason it remains one of the best movies ever awarded the Academy’s top honor.
My introduction to his filmography was with 2006’s The Host. I knew very little of South Korean cinema at the time, but I did love monster movies. I rented Razortooth from my local video store no fewer than a dozen times, okay. Anyone who’s seen The Host knows it’s not your conventional monster movie, and after the initial disappointment wore off (don’t blame me, I was in middle school), I revisited the film, and it cemented itself among my favorites of all time. From then, I’ve been certifiably obsessed. Mother is a masterpiece, Snowpiercer is as solid an English-language debut as any, and Okja breaks my heart, but that doesn’t stop me from watching it annually. Bong Joon-ho’s genuine masterpiece, however, is the classic serial killer flick Memories of Murder. With Mickey 17 hitting theaters soon, now is the perfect time to revisit Memories of Murder, now streaming free on Tubi.
Per Tubi: Based on a harrowing true story, two detectives hunt for a sadistic serial rapist and murderer in a small province in 1980s South Korea.
Famously, at the time of release, Memories of Murder’s unknown killer had yet to be apprehended. Song Kang-ho’s Park Doo-man ends the film staring directly into the camera, out into the audience. A conspicuously knowing glance—the killer is still out there, and there’s a chance they’re in the theater watching this movie alongside you. It wasn’t until 2019 that South Korean detectives first linked Lee Choon-jae to the killings. He was already incarcerated for the death of his sister, though the statute of limitations had expired for the serial killings.
So, while the real-world resonance is certainly striking, Memories of Murder is a masterpiece independent of its true story origins. No different than Bong Joon-ho’s other films, a strong social core is augmented by grim imagery, gut-busting laughs, and an earnest undercurrent that, in theory, shouldn’t work together, but somehow, remarkably do. No one does it quite like Bong Joon-ho.
Now that the film is streaming free on Tubi, do you have any plans to check it out? If you do, let me know what you thought over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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