Spine 690: The Housemaid

The first World Cinema Boxset draws to a close with Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960), a film whose influence you can clearly see in many modern South Korean directors' work, from Bong Joon-ho to Park Chan-wook. A sort of domestic horror film punctuated with a moral message ending that left us floored for the audacity of its presentation, The Housemaid is maybe the best movie in a boxset of bangers, a thing I think I've said about each film in the set at this point. We also take some time to reflect on the set as a whole, its weird collection of sponsors, and how we very much want more of this from Criterion.