Review | Alienoid movie review: sci-fi and period fantasy meet in star-studded Korean two-parter featuring Kim Woo-bin, Kim Tae-ri and Ryu Jun-yeol

Choi Dong-hoon’s alien invasion science-fiction story mixed with 14th-century Korean fantasy has amazing special effects

The two-part movie follows the hunt for a magic crystal called the Divine Blade on an Earth being used by aliens as a prisoner-of-war camp

Reading Time:2 minutes

Kim Woo-bin plays Guard in a still from Alienoid (category IIA, Korean), the first in a two-part Korean film series directed by Choi Dong-hoon that mixes science fiction and period fantasy. Kim Tae-ri and Ryu Jun-yeol co-star.

Published: 5:15pm, 17 Aug 2022

3/5 stars

Following a string of hits including The Big Swindle, The Thieves and Assassination, writer-director Choi Dong-hoon takes his biggest gamble to date with Alienoid.

The first of two planned films, this hugely ambitious undertaking is a bold blend of genres, interweaving alien invasion science fiction with goofy period fantasy.

Meshing advanced technology with super-powered magic is an approach that continues to work for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but without a recognisable brand to entice audiences en masse, Choi’s unwieldy action comedy may have its work cut out to make an impact.

Unbeknown to humanity, Earth has been used as a penal colony for an advanced race of alien beings. For hundreds of years, extraterrestrial prisoners of war have been incarcerated inside oblivious human hosts.

Guard (Kim Woo-bin) and his robot sidekick Thunder (voiced by Kim Dae-myung) are on the ground tasked with monitoring these secret inmates, rounding up those able to escape their anthropomorphic prisons, but otherwise getting pretty despondent with their solitary station.

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