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COLONY 군체 (2026) dir. Yeon Sang Ho

TRAIN TO BUSAN 부산행 2016, dir. Yeon Sang-ho

TJ MIKELOGAN's HALLOWEEN 2024 EVENT Day 3: Foreign horror

부산행 | Train to Busan 2016, dir: Yeon Sang-ho

Train to Busan (2016)

Train to Busan (2016) dir. Sang - ho Yeon

It’s easy to paint people as evil. And the audience wants that, because it means that they have a source where they can place blame for the injustices in the world. And then they can dust their hands off, because then it’s got nothing to do with them. I don’t want the audience to be able to shrug off responsibility so easily, and a version of that idea has crossed over into much of my work. (x)

It can’t go away, you see. It follows you around like a ghost.

Park Ji-young in Lingering | 호텔 레이크 (2020) dir. Yoon Eun-gyeong

He’s concerned that one actor isn’t seeing enough appreciation: Yeri Han, who plays Monica, the anxious wife of Steven Yeun’s idealistic Jacob. “In the editing room, she was the one who we were always centering our emotional story around,” Chung said of Han. “It’s her face, it’s her looks, and the way she picks at a bedspread because she’s upset. These little, subtle things that we knew: ‘This is making the film what it is.’” He paused. “And unfortunately, it’s invisible.” In Minari, Han navigates tricky, emotionally nuanced territory without the sort of melodrama or outsize performances that Hollywood tends to reward. “There are no loud speeches or anything,” Chung told me. “It’s just her being.” That’s the work that all actors do: the very act of being, which can range from emphatic to muted, animated to lethargic, impassioned to impassive. Asian performers are certainly versatile enough to capture that range—and yet tropes such as the “inscrutable Asian” have caused some casting directors to think of Asians as “not very expressive.” The pervasiveness of such casually racist myths—the inscrutable Asian, the perpetual foreigner, the racialized horde—is foundational to the invisibility of Asian actors during the Hollywood awards season. Given this backdrop, it’s little wonder when a quiet performance like Han’s is overlooked. — Shirley Li: ‘Minari’ and the Invisible Stars of Asian-Led Movies

JI CHANG WOOK as CHOI HYUN SEOK COLONY (2026)