Right paw, left paw, aliens, dosas, Guard, Thunder, a mystical sacred blade, time travel, a magic mirror, charms, wire fu, this is a costume piece, a sci fi adventure film and a monster film.

A rip-roaring sci fi adventure that takes place over centuries about alien prisoners implanted into humans as both a punishment and a jail cell.
This is a crowd pleaser for sure.

The first South Korean film I have seen at this year’s festival.
Last year I saw the excellent Cobweb starring Song Kang Ho which was also a comedy but tonally locally* it was much more my usual cup of coffee (I don’t drink tea).
Alienoid came out in South Korea in 2022 and became the 9th highest grossing South Korean film of that year but didn’t perform as well as expected as the film had quite a large budget.

I was a bit worried about this one to begin with. If there’s too much buffoonery; in the script, the soundtrack and style of the film then it can feel too ‘forcibly family oriented’ and that always seems to be an agenda shoehorned in by the studio rather than being a genuinely decent family film.
It’s so annoying when we are too obviously shown how to feel by the score, the script or even the on the nose acting.

Right Paw (Shin Jung-geun), Mureuk (Ryu Jun-yeol) and Left Paw (Lee Si-hoon) in Alienoid

As Alienoid began I felt like this was going to be the case, there was a commercial quirkiness that could quite easily be very annoying.

It was a lot of fun. Including great characters, plot turns, action sequences, a ton of comedy, wire fu, high stakes and two cats who turn into humans.
Starring Kim Woo-bin as Guard and the body of Thunder who is voiced by Kim Dae-myung, Ryu Jun-yeol (who I recently saw and was very good in the excellent period drama, The Night Owl) playing Mureuk, Kim Tae-ri (The Handmaiden) playing the older Yi-an with Choi Yu-ri  doing an excellent job playing the younger version, Yum Jung-ah and Jo Woo-jin are both brilliant and provide a lot of the comedy as the mages/dosas/Taoist monks, Heug-seol and Cheong-woon, also starring Lee Hanee as Min Gae-in.
Directed by Choi Dong-hoon (The Thieves, Assassination).

By the end, I was well involved, invested in the story and the characters and was really looking forward to part 2 .

The double bill was sold together as part of this year’s Sydney Film Festival and the screenings I saw took part over 2 consecutive nights.

Alienoid: Return to the Future was released in South Korea in January this year and I was lucky to see both films on a big screen.
The comedy, characters and twists and turns of Return to the Future was massively enjoyable.
The comic relief was great and the tone was all good.

The films had some critics in South Korea who found it too convoluted but I loved the many levels and layers of the narrative. The music was great, scored mostly by Jang Young-gyu and the cinematography by Kim Tae-kyung was framed beautifully.

Yum Jung-ah and Jo Woo-jin as the Taoist monks, Heug-seol and Cheong-woon in Alienoid:Return to the Future

The effects, whilst not up to the standards of some highly budgeted American fare, were fun and buyable. The set pieces were rewarding, special mention goes to the two dosas* (above) with their brilliant chemistry and comic timing.

This double bill was the most fun I’d had at the festival up to that point. Well worth a look.
Watch them both on Amazon Prime now.

*Tonally Locally is a play on words referring to the American rapper from the 80s Tone Loc, who had hits with Wild Thing and Funky Cold Medina
(Cold coolin’ at a bar, and I’m lookin’ for some action,
Feel like Mike Jagger said, I can’t get no satisfaction)

*By dosas, I mean Taoist sorcerers as opposed to the delicious South Indian pancake and potato dish that my Dad used to cook to perfection.