South Korean film “Concrete Utopia” is a dark but compelling apocalyptic thriller coupled with some biting social satire to be savored. While it feels conventional on the surface at times, the movie efficiently handles its story and characters in addition to establishing well its mood and background on the screen, and the result is one of more entertaining mainstream South Korean films during the summer season of this year.

After the amusing opening montage scene showing the long history of apartment complex development in Seoul during last several decades, the movie immediately puts us right into a sudden grim situation surrounding Min-seong (Park Seo-joon) and his wife Myeong-hwa (Park Bo-young) and many neighbors of their old apartment building. For some unspecified reason, Seoul is struck by a massive earthquake on one cold winter day, and this huge catastrophe seems to destroy all the buildings in the city except Min-seong and Myeong-hwa’s apartment building.

While everyone in the apartment building tries to recover from shock and awe during the following aftermath, they are consoled a bit by their incredible good luck. As mentioned at one point early in the story, their apartment was not so valuable compared to many of neighboring apartment buildings, but now their apartment becomes a priceless shelter, and they are certainly willing to protect it at any cost. As the survivors from the outside keep coming to the apartment building, they eventually decide to get rid of all of those outsiders at once, and Yeong-tak (Lee Byung-hun), who happens to be recently elected as the new representative of the apartment building residents, is ready to do anything for their common interest and survival.

After its several main characters are established one by one, the screenplay by director Um Tae-hwa and his co-writer Lee Sin-ji, which is based on Kim Sung-nik’s webtoon “Pleasant Bullying”, steadily follows their gradual descent into selfishness and cruelty while occasionally wielding its dark sense of humor. We are chilled by how much people can go low in the name of safety and survival, but we are also amused by the sheer human absurdity observed from that. So insulated from whatever is going on in the outside world, many residents of the apartment building let themselves driven by their worse sides under Yeong-tak’s increasingly questionable leadership, and, not so surprisingly, their hostility is eventually directed toward some residents who simply choose to be more decent and compassionate unlike many others around them.

Myeong-hwa is one of such conscientious persons in the apartment building, so she naturally comes to conflict a lot with her husband, who, in contrast, is willing to do anything for their survival. He and many others often go outside along with Yeong-tak for finding for anything to eat, and, as Myeong-hwa has worried from the beginning, he soon comes to face how he can easily cross lines for his survival and benefit.

During its second half, the movie generates more tension as a certain supporting character enters the picture. I will not describe in detail, but I can tell you instead that this supporting character in question later reveals something very important to Myeong-hwa. As a matter of fact, you may be able to guess it in advance while musing a bit on how many apartment building residents are usually distant and ignorant about each other in reality. Come to think of it, I am now reminded that I do not know or remember anything about any of those neighbors in my one-room apartment building, although I have lived here for more than 3 years now.

As deftly mixing satiric elements into the thriller narrative of his film, Um also pays a lot of attention to the mood and details of its apocalyptic background, and his crew members including cinematographer Joe Hyung-rae did a terrific job on the whole. The special effects in the film look relatively modest compared to many Hollywood blockbuster films out there, but they are utilized well to create a believable background to engage us, and many of those minor supporting characters in the film are credible as people you may come across in your average South Korean apartment complex.

Lee Byung-hun is the most prominent performer in the bunch, but he and several other main cast members are mostly effective together in their good ensemble performance. While Lee surely has several showy moments as required by his role, Park Seo-joon, Park Bo-young, Kim Sun-young, Park Ji-hu, and Kim Do-yoon also have each own moment to shine, and Park Seo-joon and Park Bo-young convey well to us their respective characters’ growing inner conflict along the story.

Overall, “Concrete Utopia” is worthwhile to watch for a number of good reasons, and Um, who previously made “Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned” (2016), successfully moves up to the next step of his promising filmmaking career. Along it arrives rather late after several other big South Korean films were released during last two weeks, the movie is actually the best in the group, and I appreciate how it deftly brings some distinctive atmosphere and personality to its familiar genre elements.