What is it about South Korea, playground games and mass murder? “We’re playing a big game of tag,” decrees a jaded police officer, in new Netflix drama The Frog . “And some of us are always it .” In this new thriller, the pursuers and pursued switch places, over the course of two decades, again and again, until those peeping out of classroom windows can no longer discern who’s chasing who.
Solitary widower Jeon Young-ha (Kim Yoon-seok) lives alone in the woods where he manages a luxury holiday rental. His quiet life is interrupted by the arrival of unscheduled guests – a beautiful young woman (Go Min-si) and what appears to be her young son. But when the woman and boy disappear, leaving only a trail of suspicious evidence (blood stains, bleach in the bathroom, CCTV footage of her lugging a large bag, etc), doubts begin to creep in.
Who was she? And who was the boy? Meanwhile, 20 years earlier, motel owner Gu Sang-jun (Yoon Kye-sang) finds himself caught up with a serial killer who threatens to derail his business, marriage and entire life. What links these two cases? It’s down to a hotshot detective (“banished to this backwater”), Yoon Bo-min (Lee Jung-eun), to unravel that. South Korea has long been the West’s preferred Korea – but, in recent years, it has also become the dominant exporter of entertainment from east Asia.
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (which also stars Lee) became, in 2019, the first non-English language film to win the Oscar for Best Pic.