Review of Mantis / 사마귀, directed by Lee Tae-sung

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I used to work professionally as a film critic at an online outlet, but left for a Fulbright that never happened (it’s a long story), so I’m used to watching a lot of movies at once. I took a bit of an accidental gap year after quitting that job and finishing up graduate school, and I was spending a lot of that time just watching

This blog post comes from when I started an 8-5 job. It’s coming out not long after Mantis dropped on Netflix because as soon as I saw it was available, I was eagerly waiting for the weekend before I sat down and binged it. Work has been killing me lately in terms of tiredness, then I went on vacation abroad and had to grapple with jet lag along with the 8-5 schedule.

Korean cinema has always been my home base. I’ve lived in Korea twice, speak and understand a decent amount of Korean, and I even did my master’s thesis on colonial Korean women’s literature. It feels a bit like home for me, although I’ve been intentionally trying to steer myself away from it a bit in order to see more of the world and diversify the kinds of voices and stories I’m consuming.

I originally watched Kill Boksoon when it dropped back in 2023, when I was working the critic job, and I loved it a lot. It reminded me of early 2000s Korean cinema in the best ways, especially considering I was kind of unhappy with how women were depicted in those early revenge films from directors like Park Chan-wook. Kill Boksoon honestly has been one of my favorite Korean movies in the past few years.

So when I saw Mantis was coming out on Netflix, I set a reminder and waited for the weekend (as I mentioned before). I did end up watching this movie in one sitting, although at times it felt a little difficult to do just that.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

After coming back from vacation, Han-ul, or Mantis, returns to the assassin world in chaos.

This movie begins in the past. There are a few time jumps and flashbacks scattered throughout the movie, but in the beginning it’s set before the events of Kill Boksoon. Mantis, or Han-ul, takes down a guy then has a serious conversation with the head of the company, Min-kyu. If you watched the previous movie (KB), then you’re going to know where this is going in some ways.

Han-ul decides to go on vacation, then we have the next time jump. He’s coming back and literally in the Incheon Airport arrivals section when he learns about what Boksoon has done to the company, and that the assassin/hitman world has literally erupted into chaos. People are at the airport too trying to poach him for their companies, much to his chagrin.

And that’s how he gets thrown back into the general chaos of the world he existed in. He seeks out Jae-yi, who he used to train with, and gets some intel about the current situation. She has her crew she’s running around with, and we’re going to get to know them pretty well throughout the course of the movie. We do never really learn their backstories though, making them a bit disposable to the plot.

It’s through the flashbacks though that we learn Jae-yi harbors some resentment over the fact that Han-ul was picked to debut over her. Her resentment over several things like this becomes the core of her character’s motivations throughout the film, even though we see

Han-ul also gets in touch with someone he used to know pretty well at the company: Dok-go. He’s a ruthless killer and notorious for how efficient he was when he was active, but by pulling him into their affairs, especially as they plot out starting their own company, things are going to get messy.

There’s also Benjamin, a rich kid who wants to use Jae-yi for his entertainment company. He wants to fund them and build his own violent game, and at a certain point in the film Jae-yi completely defects to this guy and ends up pretty much betraying her buddies. That hurts Han-ul, who clearly has a crush on her and is now running their company—which becomes a different weird dance throughout the course of the movie.

The plot at this point becomes very convoluted in a way that might be confusing for some viewers. I had to keep rewinding at certain points because I was scratching my head in confusion at what exactly was going on. And as someone who had watched and admired Kill Boksoon, I was shocked at how little action actually was in this movie.

A lot of it is literally just exposition and characters standing around and talking to each other. The flashbacks add more context by showing what’s happening on the screen, but I found this movie to be pretty messy in how it tries to tie together all of its moving parts.

It feels like too much is happening on the screen but not enough to actually be productive in showing how these characters are growing throughout the course of the film. By the time we got to the movie’s ending, I was literally quite frustrated at how things were going in terms of execution.

Overall Thoughts

I think if you’re coming into this movie with a love for Kill Boksoon, you might be setting yourself up for some unfortunate disappointment. It not only lacks the dark humor that was present in the previous film, but also the heart and soul of what made that such a good movie.

Like the actors did a good job with what they were given. Im Si-wan especially nails his role, which I was surprised by because I’d never seen him in a role like this. I last watched him in Unlocked and Squid Game, which were the closest to this kind of character, but I thought he did such a good job bringing Han-ul to life.

Anyways, as I wrote before, this movie is just kind of messy. Maybe it was too rushed in terms of writing and production, or all of the budget was blown on getting such an incredible cast together. This is such a good group of actors, so it’s shame to see the movie turn out like this.

I personally did not care for this movie at all, but if you’re interested give it a chance. Maybe you’ll love it more than I do, and that’s okay. Taste is so incredibly subjective—neither of us are wrong for our opinion.

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