Bong Joon-ho’s latest film is at once a murder mystery, a portrait of a small Korean town and, above all, a meditation on the dark complexity of the ambivalent bonds binding parents and children. Kim Hye-ja brings a riveting, desperate energy to her portrayal of the title character, a woman trying to prove that her son has been coerced into confessing to a murder he did not commit. As her investigation continues and expands, it unearths ever-darker layers in the community and in the relationship between mother and son. Bong’s talent for conjuring a sense of menace from landscape, color and framing suggests a rich hybrid of Hitchcock’s crisp storyboarded world and Imamura’s ribald animism. Kim’s character ultimately reveals her Imamuran ancestry—earthy, potentially violent, and seemingly indomitable.