The horror genre is regularly overlooked by a number of prestigious film organizations, though there’s been a noticeable shift in recent years. Earlier this year, a record number of horror movies were nominated for Oscars, including Sinners, Weapons, and Frankenstein. In 2018, Guillermo del Toro‘s monstrous romance The Shape of Water even took home Best Picture. Just a few years later, Bong Joon Ho‘s Parasite scored Best Picture, and while it might not be outright traditional horror, the filmmaker is well-rooted in the genre.
Bong followed his Oscar win with the sci-fi movie Mickey 17 and after his next movie, Ally, he plans to fully return to the world of crime and horror. When asked by Variety about his previously teased subway-set horror movie, the filmmaker confirmed, “Yeah, it’s still in my head. Now I have two or three stories. I’ve always been a huge fan of crime stories and dark horror action movies.”
Part of what has made Bong such a major force in the world of cinema is just how diverse his filmography is. From Memories of Murder to The Host to Snowpiercer to Okja, it’s nearly impossible to predict what he’ll do next and also impossible to relegate him to one storytelling realm.
Even the filmmaker himself confessed how he has a difficult time defining his projects. Speaking on The Director’s Cut podcast in 2021, per IndieWire, Bong explained of his future plans, “The Korean film is located in Seoul and has unique elements of horror and action … It’s difficult to define the genre of my films. The English project is a drama film based on a true event that happened in 2016. Of course I won’t know until I finish the script, but it has to be set half in the U.K. and half in the U.S.”
Another reason that Bong’s return to horror is so exciting is that, just last year, John Carpenter personally volunteered to score the next horror film Bong made. During a presentation of The Thing, Bong hosted a conversation with Carpenter, with Bong not wanting to let such an exciting opportunity go to waste and asking Carpenter to score his next movie. Carpenter enthusiastically confirmed, “Oh, I wanna do your score!”
Stay tuned for updates on future Bong Joon Ho movies.
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