What comes to mind when you think of serial killers in American media? Perhaps you imagine the intimidating figure of Leatherface flailing around with his saw in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974), or the quiet, Byronic portrayal of Jeffrey Dahmer in Netflix’s “Monster” (2022). If you’re on a different side of the internet, perhaps Hannibal Lecter’s homoerotic tension with Will Graham is your go-to serial killer trope.
What these different depictions have in common is that serial killing becomes a spectacle to satisfy the macabre fascination of American audiences. Bong Joon Ho’s “Memories of Murder” (2003), however, subverts the expectations established by popular serial killer narratives and reflects a more realistic vision of crime.
“Memories of Murder” is based on the Hwaseong murders, one of the first recorded serial killings in South Korea. The murders took place in rural South Korea between September 15, 1986 and April 3, 1991. The police originally identified 10 victims, but it was later revealed that a total of 15 women had been killed. The killer was still unidentified when Bong Joon Ho’s film was shot and released.
By delving into real events, Bong creates a film that is part mystery and part social commentary. Compared to the astute, respectable cops pitted against Hollywood’s serial killers, Bong’s detectives are exaggerated to be comically incompetent. Song Kang-ho plays the cocky Inspector Park, accompanied by his sidekick, Inspector Cho, who tries to karate-kick his way through the investigation to no avail.
A young officer transferred from Seoul seems more professional, but even he descends to unethical and ineffective methods when the investigation becomes frustrating. Through the detectives’ incoherent fumbling, DNA evidence is lost and they resort to beating a mentally disabled man in hopes of extracting a confession. They become so desperate that parts of the investigation are downright absurd. After no hair is found at the crime scenes, Park concludes that the murderer must be hairless and decides to spy on men in saunas, trying to find the smoking gun of shaven genitals.
As ridiculous as this all sounds, the film’s slapstick humor is not just comedic relief, but a pointed satire of South Korean society in the 1980s. Before DNA testing and other forensic methods were widely available, South Korean police had long used inhumane methods of interrogation, such as sleep deprivation and physical violence.
Looming above it all is the military dictatorship that controlled South Korea. Taking place in 1986, a year before South Korea’s first democratic election, the film never loses sight of the political unrest brewing below the surface. During a key point in the investigation, manpower is diverted to suppress democratic uprisings in other parts of the country.
Bong frames the failure to solve the murders as more than a result of incompetent individuals; instead, he depicts it as a systemic failure of the South Korean government toward the victims of the Hwaseong murder, and by extension, every Korean citizen.
Though the murders involve sexual violence, Bong resists turning the women’s bodies into spectacles. Police officers and journalists stampede through the crime scenes, focusing the attention on the messy investigative process and denying viewers a voyeuristic gaze toward the victim.
Bong also shows a countryside shrouded in grief and accompanied by constant rain. His refusal of spectacle extends to the landscape, where persistent rain and sickly green tones create an atmosphere of collective grief. It looks as if even nature mourns for the lost lives.
The last scene of the film is especially haunting. In 2003, Park revisits the scene of the first crime. A little girl comments that a man was snooping around in the same place earlier, in response to which Park seems concerned and asks what he looked like. She describes him as plain, and Park presses on, asking, “In what way?” The girl thinks for a moment, and replies, “Just … ordinary.” Park’s face freezes into a look of confusion and horror as he stares unnervingly at the audience, and the screen goes dark.
There is no satisfying ending. No one is brought to justice, and as far as the Korean public was concerned, the murderer was watching the film with them. Park’s final stare is an accusing one, intended to reach the unknown, “ordinary” killer. In 2019, DNA evidence identified him to be Lee Choon-jae, who was already serving a life sentence for killing his sister-in-law in 1994.
This is precisely what makes “Memories of Murder” so unique. It doesn’t follow any tropes, but rather shows murder for what it is. Passionate detectives are often incapable of bringing the truth to light, whether due to personal failures or institutional negligence. The criminal is not always someone with a fascinating psychology; more often than not, he is just … ordinary.