3.5/5 stars

The premise of this South Korean disaster film – about a regular family man who gets trapped inside a collapsed traffic tunnel – can’t be simpler. But Tunnel, scripted and directed with remarkable poise by A Hard Day’s Kim Seong-hun, proves to be a thoroughly engaging drama that is peppered with both improbably dark humour and pungent attempts at social commentary.

Ha Jung-woo ( The Handmaiden , Assassination ) plays Lee Jung-soo, a car salesman who’s driving home with a cake to celebrate his young daughter’s birthday. The movie opens to a trivial incident at a service station, where Lee ends up leaving with a full tank of petrol and two small bottles of water. He then drives into a seemingly deserted tunnel, which caves in and buries him under a mountain of rubble.

Outside, Lee’s wife, Se-hyun (Bae Doona), strains to hold herself together, while a government task force, headed by the deeply sympathetic Kim Dae-kyung (Oh Dal-su), explores excavation options before it’s too late. With just a mobile phone and his car radio to stay in touch with the world, Lee soon learns about the complications in the rescue operation that would keep him buried for days – if not weeks.