An unemployed paper worker hatches a cunning plan to murder his way back into the job market in this continually surprising black comedy from the director of The Handmaiden and Oldboy. 

Korean director Park Chan-wook’s new film brings his usual effortlessly fluent, steely confidence and a type of storytelling momentum that can accommodate all kinds of digressions, set-pieces and the occasional trance-like submission to mysterious visions.

It starts like an Ealing comedy-type caper then morphs into something else: a portrait of family dysfunction, fragile masculinity and the breadwinner crisis, and the state of the nation itself. 

It's based on Donald E Westlake’s satirical horror-thriller The Ax from 1997, previously filmed in 2005 by Costa-Gavras.