The 20 Most Terrifying Korean Thrillers to Stream Right Now

If I hear the words thriller or horror, I immediately think of Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho or The Birds. However, Hollywood isn’t the only place that has this genre down to pat. Below, I’ve rounded up 20 terrifying Korean thrillers, ranging from the Oscar-winning Parasite to The Vengeance Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Old Boy, Lady Vengeance). Whether you’re looking for a Halloween movie or a year-round underrated scary flick, these are guaranteed to have you cowering under your weighted blanket, popcorn long forgotten.

• Rating: R
• Run Time: 2 hours
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 83% | IMDb 8.3/10

The film is set in 1988 and follows businessman Oh Dae-su as he’s kidnapped following an arrest for public drunkenness. He finds himself imprisoned in a hotel room, where he’s served food through a pet door. When he’s finally released, it sets off a harrowing chain of events involving a former classmate, a long-lost daughter and forbidden love.

Oldboy, directed and co-written by Park Chan-wook, is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where jury president Quentin Tarantino gave it high praise. It spawned two adaptations: a 2006 unauthorized Hindi remake and a 2013 American adaptation. Oldboy is the second movie in Park’s The Vengeance Trilogy, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and preceding Lady Vengeance (2005).

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 2 hours 24 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 81% | IMDb 7.8/10

Grisly murders and a makeshift guillotine make I Saw the Devil one of the most terrifying Korean thrillers you could possibly watch. Directed by Kim Jee-woon, the movie premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival to generally favorable reviews. The plot follows NIS (the South Korean equivalent of the CIA) agent Kim Soo-hyun as he seeks revenge on Jang Kyung-chul, a homicidal bus driver who brutally dismembered Kim’s fiancé. After forcing Jang to swallow a transmitter that tracks his every move, it becomes a bloody game of cat and mouse.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 82% | IMDb 7.8/10

The film centers on Joong-ho, a pimp and former police detective whose prostitutes have gone missing. Eventually, he finds himself entangled with a ruthless serial killer, who kidnaps Joong-ho’s remaining prostitute, Mi-jin. With no physical evidence, he embarks on a wild chase to find Mi-jin before it’s too late.

The Chaser has been called one of the most disturbing Korean thrillers of all time. Even more terrifying is the fact that it’s inspired by a real serial killer, Yoo Young-chul, who was also a sex offender and self-confessed cannibal.

• Rating: R
• Run Time: 2 hours 14 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 81% | IMDb 7.1/10

Literature fans should put Thirst at the top of their watch list. The movie is based on Émile Zola’s 1867 novel, Thérèse Raquin, which details the affair of a woman with her husband’s best friend. But in Thirst, vampires are involved. The story follows priest Sang-hyun who’s a beloved figure in his community, but a failed medical experiment renders him a vampire.

Thirst was South Korea’s ninth most watched film in 2009, debuting at number one. It was also the recipient of that year’s Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It was nominated, but did not win, the Palme d’Or.

• Rating: R
• Run Time: 2 hours 9 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 96% | IMDb 7.7/10

If you like Bong Joon-ho’s work (you may know him for Parasite), then put this 2009 Korean thriller on your list. The film tells the story of a poor widow who’s living with her disabled adult son, Yoon Do-joon. To support her family, she provides under-the-table acupuncture treatments that help people erase bad memories. When a local high school girl is found dead, Do-joon is wrongly accused. This sends his mom on a desperate quest to clear his name—but not everything is as it seems.

Like Parasite, Mother was a success, becoming South Korea’s sixth highest-grossing film of 2009. It received a bevy of awards and nominations, premiering at Cannes.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 63% | IMDb 7.5/10

Lee Ja-Sung is an undercover police officer at a large crime syndicate, known as Goldmoon. Though he has requested to be transferred overseas, the police chief continually defers his appointment. After the Goldmoon chairman dies in an accident, two underlings go to war for control—and the police chief tries to manipulate their every move, hoping to make the syndicate weak enough to defeat. As conflict breaks out, Ja-Sung finds himself—and his past—on the line.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 95% | IMDb 8.1/10

Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 Korean thriller is based on Kim Kwang-rim’s 1996 play, Come to See Me, and a real-life case known as the Hwaseong serial murders. Inexperienced small-town detective Park Doo-man teams up with Seoul detective Seo Tae-yoon to investigate the rape and murder of two women. Though their methods clash, they slowly unearth chilling clues that lead to a variety of suspects.

• Rating: R
• Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 99% | IMDb 8.5/10

While Bong Joon-ho’s films have received widespread acclaim, he is best known for 2019’s Parasite, which chronicles the story of a poor family that schemes their way into the lives of a much wealthier one. The story kicks off when Min-hyuk, a university student, suggests that Kim Ki-woo take his place tutoring a wealthy student. Slowly, Ki-woo secures jobs for his entire family.

“This movie is so suspenseful, the acting is amazing and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. 10/10, no notes,” raves PureWow fashion editor Abby Hepworth.

Parasite premiered at Cannes, where it was the first Korean film to win the prestigious Palme d’Or, the festival’s greatest honor. Additionally, Bong’s film was the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It also swept the Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film categories, and it’s the first South Korean movie to have ever received Oscar recognition.

• Rating: R
• Run Time:  1 hour 59 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 100% | IMDb 7.7/10

The Man from Nowhere was South Korea’s highest-grossing film in 2010, so put this Korean thriller at the top of your queue. The plot centers on pawnshop owner Cha Tae-sik, who befriends a little girl in the neighborhood named So-mi. When the girl’s mother pawns a bag of opium at Tae-sik’s shop, it attracts the attention of a drug lord, and a violent chase for the goods begins. Meanwhile, Tae-sik must also find So-mi, who has been taken hostage by the drug dealers.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 78% | IMDb 6.9/10

In The Isle, Suh Jung plays a mute woman, Hee-jin, who runs a remote fishing resort where she controls the primary means of transportation and access to necessities. One day, an outlaw comes to stay at the resort, and a love triangle soon forms between them and a local prostitute. With competing affections, things quickly turn violent, and Hee-jin must cover up some accidental (and intentional) crimes.

• Rating: TV-MA
• Run Time: 2 hours 36 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 99% | IMDb 7.4/10

The mountain village of Gokseong is plagued by a mysterious illness that causes the sick to violently murder their own kin. When his daughter is infected, Jong-goo sets out to discover the cause of the illness. All evidence points to a recently arrived Japanese stranger with glowing red eyes, who was seen feasting on a deer carcass.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 95% | IMDb 7.6/10

Train to Busan is an ode to a bloody zombie apocalypse. Seok-woo, a workaholic fund manager and divorced father, agrees to take his estranged daughter, Su-an, to Busan to see her mother for her birthday. On the way, they learn that a zombie infection is spreading rapidly throughout the country—and their train. The father and daughter must fight to survive as fellow passengers slowly turn into zombies.

• Rating: R
• Run Time: 2 hours 9 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 53% | IMDb 7.5/10

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is the first film in director Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy. It’s followed by Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005). The plot centers on Ryu, a deaf-mute factory worker whose sister needs a kidney transplant. Because he isn’t a match, he arranges to sell one of his kidneys on the black market in exchange for a compatible one for his sister. However, the organ dealers run off with both the money and his kidney, leaving him bereft. At his radical anarchist girlfriend’s urging, Ryu decides to kidnap the daughter of the man who fired Ryu from his job, so he can use the ransom money to fund the operation.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 100% | IMDb 7.3/10

The first in director Kim Ki-young’s Housemaid trilogy, this movie tells the story of Kim Dong-sik, a piano teacher who works as the accompanist of a factory choir. Though he is well-liked by the women at the factory, he is married with two children, and his wife is expecting their third child. One particular choir member, Miss Cho, is infatuated with him, and she convinces her friend to write a letter confessing how she feels. This doesn’t sit well with the family’s new housekeeper, who is also in love with Dong-sik. She threatens blackmail, which pressures him into an affair with deadly consequences.

• Rating: TV-MA
• Run Time: 2 hours 14 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 65% | IMDb 6.3/10

In a dystopian South Korea, the value of the won has crashed. Jun-seok, a thief, has just been released from prison for a botched heist. He proposes that he and his best friends, Jang-ho and Ki-hoon, pull one last robbery so they can create better lives. The trio raid a gambling house, taking off with a fortune in American dollars and incriminating hard drives. The owners launch a manhunt for the friends to recover the drives, culminating in a deadly shootout.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 2 hours 25 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 96% | IMDb 8.1/10

A saga in three parts, The Handmaiden tells the story of a con man posing as “Count Fujiwara,” who plans to seduce a wealthy heiress, Lady Hideko, and steal her inheritance. Count Fujiwara enlists a pickpocket, Sook-hee, to work as Lady Hideko’s maid and convince her to elope with him. As the plot progresses, backstories and motives are revealed, resulting in something truly twisted.

The Handmaiden is based on Sarah Water’s 2002 novel Fingersmith, but the film changes the setting from Victorian Britain to Korea under Japanese colonial rule. It competed for the Plame d’Or at Cannes in 2016 and won the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 1 hours 55 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 88% | IMDb 7.3/10

Hae-won is an isolated employee in a Seoul bank. She is stern and competitive, unwilling to involve herself in anything that doesn’t affect her. As such, she declines to identify the culprit in an attack on a woman, believing it’s not her problem. After an altercation with a coworker, Hae-won is fired and takes a vacation to her childhood home of Mudo. There, she reconnects with an old friend, Bok-nam, who has lived a difficult life under an abusive husband and community. Hae-won refuses to aid her friend, who has a psychotic breakdown when her daughter is accidentally killed. This sets Bok-nam off on a murderous rampage, and Hae-won must decide whether or not she will continue to be apathetic to the suffering of those around her—especially when Bok-nam comes after her.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 73% | IMDb 7.1/10

Kang-do is a ruthless loan shark who demands exorbitant interest on his loans. To pay their debts, his clients sign handicap insurance applications, allowing Kang-do to cripple them and collect insurance. One day, a woman claims that she is the mother who abandoned him 30 years ago. As their relationship deepens, Kang-do begins to see the consequences of his previous actions—before her kidnapping reveals the truth.

Pieta premiered at the 69th Venice Film Festival, where it became the first Korean movie to win the Golden Lion.

• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 2 hours
• Reviews: Rotten Tomatoes 93% | IMDb 7.1/10

Yet another film by Bong Joon-ho. Set in the 2000s, the story begins with an American pathologist dumping formaldehyde down a drain that empties into the Han River. Over the next six years, residents spot a mysterious amphibious creature. Years later, a monster emerges and begins killing people.

Upon release, The Host was South Korea’s highest-grossing film to date, and it earned positive reviews while grossing $90 million on an $11 million budget.