SINKHOLE
Eleven years. Eleven years of pencil-pushing in a dusty office and holidays at the Costa Casa (AKA an inflatable pool in the living room) were needed for Dong-wok to scrape together just enough cash to finally realize his long-cherished dream: getting his own joint in the city of Seoul! Sure, in the industrial outskirts of Seoul, with an incessantly screeching metro line within earshot, but Seoul nonetheless. So long, commuting! Dong-wok is a big city boy now. But his euphoria won’t last long. As soon as he sets foot in the apartment he notices the floor isn’t leveled and, even worse, due to uninterrupted heavy rainfall small cracks start to show in the walls – something his colleagues immediately comment upon during the housewarming party. Deeply humiliated, Dong-wok wished the ground would swallow him up… and that’s exactly what happens next! The whole building with D-W, colleagues and neighbors comes tumbling and crumbling down into a massive sinkhole that leads them deep into the Earth’s bowels, some 16.000 feet below the surface. They’re gonna need to find a way up, or stay six(teen thousand) feet under forever… Director Ji-hoon Kim’s first incursion into the disaster genre, 2012’s THE TOWER, was already a smash hit, but he has perfected his skill with SINKHOLE. The same rollicking rollercoaster action, but trading in the previous film’s self-seriousness for a lighter, comic tone that works wonders thanks to an excellent cast. And look, it was number 6 at the Korean 2021 box-office (leaving, say, DUNE far behind) and who are we to doubt the Korean nation’s impeccable taste?