The last thing I expected to glean from the first trailer for Bong Joon-ho’sOpens in a new tab OkjaOpens in a new tab was a feeling of familiarity. The director has eschewed tradition time and time over, offering up instead some of the most winningly strange pictures in contemporary filmmaking; our earlier looks at OkjaOpens in a new tab suggested that this next outing would carry that torch. And indeed, it packs plenty of weird. But surprisingly enough, Okja does also read as a pretty familiar, traditional story. As the first trailer spells out pretty clearly, the movie will follow a young girl’s quest to rescue her beloved pet after he’s been kidnapped. Surely we’ve seen this premise carried time and time again. The difference: this time, the pet in question is a gigantic pig monster.
In fairness, that’s hardly the only thing that promises to separate Okja from its ilk. The kidnapper in question is Tilda SwintonOpens in a new tab, armed with an even greater helping of showboaty menace than she shouldered in her last collaboration with Bong Joon-ho, SnowpiercerOpens in a new tab.
The megalomaniacal culture over which she reigns will be the main hurdle between farm girl Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) and her precious Okja. Filling out the cast are the likes of Paul DanoOpens in a new tab and Steven YeunOpens in a new tab as a pair of animal rights activists, a gun-toting Lily CollinsOpens in a new tab, a sinister-looking Giancarlo EspositoOpens in a new tab (what else is new?), and a damn near unrecognizable Jake GyllenhaalOpens in a new tab.
In short, there does indeed look to be plenty of that typically weird Bong Joon-ho imagination through which this decidedly traditional plot may be filtered. We’ll see how these two elements complement one another when the film hits Netflix on June 28.
Images: Netflix
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