Once again, our coverage of Bucheon International Film Festival (BIFAN) reviews is cowritten by Film Festival Editor Joseph Perry and Guest Contributing Writer Chris Weatherspoon.
A man of the world, guest reviewer Chris Weatherspoon has lived in South Korea for “quite a bit.” A huge fan of all cinema, Chris also works locally in the entertainment industry, and knows what he is talking about . . . alright!?
Focus (South Korea, 2026); review by Chris Weatherspoon
Director Sim Gyu-ho’s Focus is a slowly unraveling ghost story about a man who can’t stop looking through a lens even when it’s costing him everything in front of it. The film opens on a campsite, where photographer Kim Eun-ho and his girlfriend Woo-jung are settling in for the night; a walk to borrow salt turns into something stranger, something the film wisely doesn’t explain.
After the opening sequence, we learn that Eun-ho is a struggling photographer who has been with the same girlfriend, a woman who has waited nine quietly patient years for a ring that still hasn’t come. When a prize-winning photo from that camping trip nets him just enough money to buy a secondhand professional camera from a distinctly unsettling dealer, it seems like his luck is finally turning. But of course, it isn’t. From the moment the camera enters his life, his personal and professional worlds start fraying in ways that feel less like bad luck than pursuit.
Sim’s own camera work leans voyeuristic throughout, watching Eun-ho from doorways and half-hidden angles as though it, too, were an intruder in his life, a fitting formal echo of the haunted lens driving the plot. That unease creeps into small domestic details too; Eun-ho sleeps in a camping tent pitched inside his own apartment rather than a bed, an odd, quietly disturbing touch that suggests some part of him never really left that campsite.
Sim renders the campsite scenes in a stark, surreal black-and-white that sets them apart from the rest of the film’s color palette, and whenever something evil is about to happen, Eun-ho’s apartment floods with a blood-red glow straight out of an old-school darkroom, a nice visual touch given his work is entirely digital.
Eventually Eun-ho and Woo-jung turn to a hypnotherapist who functions as something like the film’s Father Merrin, an expert called in to help two very unlucky people fight something they don’t understand. Sim’s fractured, non-chronological structure keeps the audience nearly as disoriented as its protagonist throughout. Focus doesn’t always cohere, and some of its logical leaps require a generous audience, but its atmosphere is thick enough to forgive the confusion.
Focus never quite decides if it wants to be a ghost story or a cautionary tale about chasing your big break, but it’s unsettling enough that you won’t mind the indecision.
Nameless (Japan, 2026); review by Joseph Perry
In Nameless, Jiro Satō —who wrote the manga on which the screenplay was based and who cowrote the screenplay with director Hideo Jōjō — stars as Yamada Taro, a man who goes on a killing spree but all video evidence shows him being weaponless. Is he truly using invisible weapons because he possesses dangerous supernatural powers?
Jōjō escalates the mystery and suspense well as the film unspools the dark backstory of its antagonist in nonlinear fashion, leading to a nailbiter of a climax. Kuranosuke Sasaki gives an intense supporting performance as Detective Kunieda, who feels strongly drawn to solve the case — Taro is initially difficult to locate and is even, as the title suggests, difficult to identify — but is removed by higher-ups.
Satō has given two excellent portrayals of villains this year, with both Nameless and Suzuki=Bakudan. His performance alone is worth watching Nameless for, but Jōjō’s direction, the taut suspense at play, and the stellar supporting cast gives even more reasons to do so.
Focus and Nameless screened as part of Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, which ran from July 2–12, 2026 in Bucheon, South Korea.
