Now Available: Yoon Jae-keun’s SPIRITWALKER Runs High On Pulsating Sci-Fi Suspense
If you run with the Asian film fandom, there’s a good chance you stumbled upon social media posts celebrating the recent successes of director Yoon Jae-keun in the wake of his latest film, Spiritwalker. Starring Yoon Kye-sang as a conciousness sauntering, adrift from his body with no memory and surrounded by enemies looking to cover-up their tracks for some seedy underworld types, our hero is forced to switch a limited number of hosts every twelve hours while trailing a woman in danger, and pieceing together the answers he needs in order to expose the truth.
Spiritwalker caught my attention especially several years after Yoon landed on my radar during Netflix’s run of 2015 drama, Last. I honestly don’t remember if wrote anything about it in one of my socials, but the show definitely put me on track to becoming part of the K-drama audience. Much of that credit goes to that show’s main star, who, due to his training for that show, makes him no stranger to the kinds of demaning feats required for action roles like the one he portrays for this latest feature, and not just for the fighting bits either; there’s a chase sequence where the actor is obviously wired for a much more controlled fall from a second floor onto the pavement, but its execution never loses you.
Adding to the intrigue is how the film ties together all the characters played by Park Yong-Woo, Yoo Seung-Mok, Lee Sung-Wook, Seo Hyun-Woo and Woo Kang-Min. There are some slightly slower spots midway in the film, but its all kinetic and developmental with everything culminating in the last leg of the film as you might expect from a film that keeps its mystery fueled well enough to last, coupled with a style of action by martial arts director Shim Sang-min and choreographers Park Young-sik and Chung Seong-Ho (Netflix’s Squid Game) that’s got the John Wick fandom in a favorable tizzy.
That the film is already the subject of its own reimagining by Hollywood producers shouldn’t come as a surprise, and provided that the right creative hands come aboard, audiences won’t be forced to endure a rehash of the kind of yesteryear stumbles that left Spike Lee’s iteration of Oldboy in the dust, or Netflix’s Death Note for that matter. It’s good that critics don’t forget these missteps with Asian IPs still proving to be a viable commodity in Western entertainment. Watching Spiritwalker will be a good way to further engage the discourse on this matter, and in the meantime, will inevitably still hold its own as one of the best standalone South Korean movies ever made.
Spiritwalker is currently streaming on Well Go USA’s premium Asian cinema streamer Hi-YAH!, and will release on Digtial, Blu-Ray and DVD from April 12. The film opens on Digital platforms in the UK on March 31 from Trinity CineAsia.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!