Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Eun-yi is hired as a maid in a mansion owned by a wealthy businessman. He quickly starts seducing his employee who seemingly has little choice but to comply with his sexual advances. Soon the women of the family plot against Eun-yi who must fight an equally devious battle to protect herself.
Im Sang-soo's remake of the 1960 Korean classic is a sleek, visually sumptuous class-warfare thriller. The cinematography by Lee Hyung-deok is genuinely exceptional — cold, immaculate compositions that mirror the sterile opulence of the chaebol household and the power imbalance at the story's core. The ending is brazenly provocative and operatic, breaking the fourth wall in a way that burns itself into memory. Acting is solid, particularly Jeon Do-yeon and Youn Yuh-jung, though the male lead is underwritten. The plot is serviceable but somewhat schematic in its allegory, leaning on familiar erotic-thriller beats even as it critiques them. Novelty is respectable — it reinterprets the source material with a distinctly contemporary cynicism — but the remake framing and genre conventions temper how truly singular it feels.