Barking Dogs Never Bite follows a man who goes to extreme lengths to deal with the dogs that are constantly barking in and around his apartment complex. Given that this is a Bong Joon-ho film, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the premise gives way to a pitch black comedy bolstered by social satire. Unlike the director’s greatest later works, though, Bong Joon-ho is clearly still figuring out how to balance this concept’s seemingly opposed tones and narrative twists.
The result is a movie that sometimes feels like more of a collage of concepts than a complete work. It’s a surprisingly silly kind of comedy given its subject matter, and its generally excellent moments of suspense are a bit too scattered to offer more than a vague reminder of other Bong Joon-ho movies you’ve probably already seen. Still, Barking Dogs Never Bite is a solid debut film that even features a few fascinating flourishes that the director never really returned to but certainly should (particularly that wonderful soundtrack.)
7. Mickey 17 (2025)
Bong Joon-ho has never made a bad movie, though some of his slightly lesser works often see the director boldly explore a variety of ideas and try to make them fit together as cleanly as possible before the ride is over. While opinions vary wildly on which of those fascinatingly imperfect works are ultimately more successful, Mickey 17 stands as perhaps the director’s most obvious example of refusing to settle for anything less than a big swing.
Inspired by Edward Ashton’s 2022 sci-fi novel Mickey7, Mickey 17 explores the many consequences of a revolutionary and controversial piece of technology that allows for otherwise “disposable” laborers to be cloned and revived when they inevitably die on some absurdly dangerous assignment. Unsurprisingly, Bong Joon-ho uses that technology to thread a plot through the logical gaps that cause capitalists to treat such workers as both essential and disposable. In its best moments, Mickey 17 finds a lot of fun in its inherently dark concept.
Yet, Mickey 17 has nearly as many storylines as there are versions of Mickey. Some narrative revelations ultimately work better than others, and the weaker aspects of the plot ultimately monopolize the experience as it builds towards a mixed finale. While the movie’s wonderful cast (Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette…) are game for everything that comes their way, even they can’t quite anchor this massive project that reaches for masterpiece status but often falls slightly short.
6. Snowpiercer (2013)
Ideally, more movies would take place on trains. They offer a perfect contained environment filled with fascinating characters that must interact with each other as they barrel towards a destination/finale. As it turns out, a train is also the perfect place for Bong Joon-ho to explore some of his wildest ideas while trying to keep everything relatively on-track.
