Korean Horror: The Housemaid
October 15, 2023
Korean Horror Film Talk & Screening Series
A bizarre and seductive housemaid systematically destroys her employers’ world in what film historians call one of the top three Korean films of all time.
Related Event
Korean Horror: Week 2 - Succubi & Killers
In week two, we’ll explore the dreadfully dark corners of desire through the succubi-like woman in the famed Korean film The Housemaid (1960) and the killers in auteur Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002).
After moving into a beautiful gothic home, the well-to-do Kim family hires a young woman named Myung-sook to be their housemaid. But her increasingly bizarre behavior—catching vermin with her bare hands, bullying the children, and spying on the married couples’ love-making—soon escalates into a full blown assault on the tethers of their nuclear family. Universally lauded as one of the top three Korean films of all time, The Housemaid established auteur Kim Ki-young as Korean cinema’s “Mr. Monster” and introduced his signature tropes—strong women pitted against weak men, gothic spaces, and lots and lots of rats. The Housemaid is a must-see masterpiece of psychological horror that reflects 1960s South Korea’s anxieties about gender, class, and filmmaking itself.
Content Advisory: Discussions of and depictions of suicide, sexual coercion, accidental death, rats.
- Original Language Title: Hanyo
- Director: Kim Ki-young
- Principal Cast: Kim Jin Kyu, Ju Jeung-nyeo, Myung-sook, Eom Aeng-ran, Ko Seon-ae, Ahn Sung-ki, Lee Yoo-ri
- Country: South Korea
- Year: 1960
- Running Time: 111 min.
- Producer: Kim Ki-young
- Screenplay: Kim Ki-young
- Cinematographers: Kim Deok-jin
- Editors: Kim Ki-young
- Music: Han Sang-gi
- Language: Korean
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- US Distributor: Criterion/Janus Films
- International Sales: World Cinema Project