Director – Choi Dong-hoon – 2024 – South Korea – LKFF Cert.12 – 122m
*****
In Part Two of the double feature, aliens once again incarcerate prisoners in human brains and travel through time between present day and fourteenth century Korea; mayhem ensues – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th
Second part of Alienoid, director Choi’s to-die-for mash-up of fourteenth century historical mayhem and twenty-first century alien invasion action delivers more of the same, opening with a brief summation of the previous movie. In Korean, the movies are helpfully called Part One and Part Two, and the second is the last one, so rather than finishing on an unexpected, irritating “to be continued” note, the second one does bring the whole thing to a conclusion, and a satisfying conclusion at that.
The whole thing is effectively a five-hour movie split into two parts, although like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001-3), each movie is paced so that it works as an experience in itself. That said, no-one I know wants to sit down and watch the second of three movies on its own, and what Alienoid really needs is for both parts to be shown close together or in a double bill, as happens all the time with all-nighter reruns of the three-part LOTR and as the BFI’s Art of Action Season recently did with the two-part historical war epic Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008-9). The two-part Alienoid is no less epic. While it takes itself far less seriously than Jackson’s literary adaptation or Woo’s historical drama, it’s breathlessly and spectacularly entertaining and deserves to be seen.
This may not particularly high on surprises if you’ve seen the first film, yet if like this writer you found that to be an exhilarating experience and simply want more of the same, it completely delivers. It’s better than that, though, because of the fact that it draws to a conclusion and doesn’t leave you hanging.
Surprisingly, the best thing about the second part is the ending itself, in which the disparate plot strands are neatly tied together to the strains of Roy Orbison’s In Dreams, previously elevated to cinematic fame in Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) which used Kitty Lester’s recording of Love Letters to orchestrate climactic scenes of mayhem in much the same way. (The two Alienoid films may not be quite be Blue Velvet, but they’re an awful lot better than Lynch’s mis-edited Dune, 1984.)
With: Ryu Jun-Yeol, Kim Tae-ri, Kim Woo-Bin, Lee Ha-nee, Yum Jung-ah, Jo Woo-jin.
Alienoid: Return to the Future plays in LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th.
Teaser Trailer:
Main trailer:
Trailer (LKFF 2024):
Trailer (Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema):