Project Wolf Hunting
“Project Wolf Hunting” transitions from a prison riot thriller to an isolated horror film on a dime, and how you react to that will depend largely on how much you can stomach the gore that director Hongsun Kim throws at the audience. The story is threadbare, and regardless of whether you’re talking about the initial crime story or the monster movie it becomes, there isn’t a lot of meat on the bones in terms of themes and ideas. This is a genre exercise, through and through, and as such, I was entertained by how crazy it got, even if it will be largely forgotten by the end.
The film begins by telling us of a prisoner exchange between South Korea and the Philippines, where the former is bringing back several South Koreans whom have been imprisoned in the Philippines on a cargo ship. Initially, they were going to be brought back via plane, but a suicide attack at an airport required them to be transported by sea. While isolated on the ship, the convicts band together and take over the ship from the police on board, unaware of the real danger that lies underneath.
Alpha (Gwi-hwa Choi), the experimental monster on the ship, is as vicious a killing machine as we’ve seen in movies. As seemingly unstoppable as the Terminator or Predator, Alpha is the work of WWII experimentation to perfect a killer, and when he comes out, no one is safe. The film doesn’t change tones when Alpha is unleashed, it just shifts how the bloodshed is unleashed on the characters. There’s something to be said about a movie that is unapologetically about one thing- and “Project Wolf Hunting” does that thing quite well- but without much of a story, it’s hard to really get behind the film beyond a base appreciation of its style. The pleasures of this film are surface only; that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a look if you can handle a lot of insane violence, though.
