Ieodo

A haunted-island mystery where the ghost might be a person, a place, or an entire way of life. When a zealous hotel developer names his new Jeju resort after the mythical submerged rock Ieodo—said to appear only to the souls of drowned fishermen—he is accused of murder and drawn to an off‑the‑map island community ruled by women and guarded by shamanic ritual. Kim Ki‑young fuses folk horror, corporate hubris, and raw erotic anxiety into a jagged, nested flashback structure that slips between memory and hallucination, while legendary cinematographer Jung Il‑sung’s lurid color gels, violent close‑ups, and storm‑lashed imagery turn sea, fog, and wind into attacking forces. The matriarchal society of haenyeo divers—harvesting the sea floor and answering to no man—gives the film an anthropological strangeness that feels at once documentary-like and fever‑dreamed. Long overshadowed by The Housemaid, Ieodo stands as one of Kim’s most audacious works: a deranged coastal noir and headlong dive into primal desire, anxious masculinity, and the death drive. Restored in 2018 by the Korean Film Archive.