Her Hobby (2023)

Dangerous Hobby

This film has a distinctive atmosphere. It moves slowly, but that very pace heightens the tension in seemingly everyday encounters and situations in a village where everyone knows everything about everyone else, yet peace and justice remain hard to achieve. At the center of the story are two women, and both actresses deliver strong performances. Despite having completely different personalities, they form a connection and begin sharing hobbies that will have far-reaching consequences.

I’m not sure if this was the director’s intention or just my personal impression, but from the very beginning of the film I felt a certain aversion toward the new neighbor and her hobbies. She arrives like a foreign body, and it’s up to each viewer to decide whether her presence improved things or made them worse. In my view, while I liked the performance, I cannot morally agree with the film’s message—though I don’t want to go into spoilers here.

The subtlety in the way the story develops is what makes this film special, but also a bit less accessible to a general audience, while genre fans may find it enjoyable. Watching it, I noticed elements reminiscent of Korean classics such as Bedevilled, No Other Choice, Oldboy, and Parasite. Although the film cannot be directly compared to any of those specifically, it still shares certain connections with them, and fans of that kind of thriller will appreciate this one as well.

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