Project Wolf Hunting

A cargo ship full of inmates and one murderous super soldier. What could possibly go wrong?

“Project Wolf Hunting. How tacky.”

I wouldn’t quite call Kim Hong-sun’s action-horror movie Project Wolf Hunting tacky, but it’s rare to see a main character call out the film so early in its runtime.  The film is more just sort of tasteless, while overselling itself right at the start. Let’s take a look.

Set almost entirely on a cargo ship carrying a dozen or so prisoners being extradited back to Korea, the story tells of a group of prisoners, led by the psychopathic murderer Jong-doo (Seo In-guk), who break free and begin slaughtering the hapless guard on board. Meanwhile, a doctor assigned to the ship (Park Ho-san), sneaks into the engine room, where two guys are watching over a seemingly dead man. This man turns out to be a super soldier called Alpha (Choi Gwi-hwa), who wakes up and goes on a murderous rampage.

Project Wolf Hunting is a film essentially in two parts, but both of those parts are damn near identical. The first half, in which Jong-doo’s men slay their way through to their boss, is basically exactly the same as the second half in which Alpha does exactly that. By the first half hour we have so many moving parts: the commander (Lee Sung-wook) taking over in HQ, Jong-doo’s men storming the ship, the shady doctor, the inmates. There’s so much to keep track of here that it’s very easy to just let go of trying to make sense of it, and just get carried away by the action.

And that’s probably what the filmmakers were going for here. The biggest difference is in the way the action is presented. At the beginning, we’re basically presented with a sort of The Raid-but-on-a-ship type movie, except one that’s unnecessarily gory. By the time the film’s over we transitioned into slasher – also a very cool idea to set on a boat (looking at you Jason Takes Manhattan) – but the switch in genre, and the bonkers bloody violence ultimately turned me off from Project Wolf Hunting. It’s a movie that tries to do so many things at once, it never really commits to anything and ends up

Everything is so serious, but also so damn weird that it’s hard to take any of it seriously. It’s hard to say if it’s also trying to be genuinely intense, or wants to lean into its goofy bullshit. The storyline with the Alpha monster is stupid in a way the movie doesn’t prepare you for, and I was unable to really connect with the rest of the story once he showed up and started murdering everyone.

The violence is pretty cool, but it’s also so bloody, in that “everyone is a bag of blood waiting to explode” way that you’ll no doubt get very numb to it in minutes. Characters you sort of like die, characters you barely know also die. It’s a movie that will have just about everyone saying “who cares” before the end credits come about. Some people survive, and there’s no reason as to why. No one deserves to die in this, and no one deserves to live either so the deaths aren’t particularly captivating. It’s just a bunch of people, some less innocent than others, just sort of in the way of this dumb as hell Jason Voorhes dude. It’s fine, but for its build-up and production values I was expecting something meaty, not just bloody.

Verdict: A bloodbath for the sake of being a bloodbath, Project Wolf Hunting doesn’t have much else going for it, unfortunately.

Overall entertainment: 5.5/10
Violence: 9/10
Sex: 2/10
Story: 2/10
Butts: One
Blowjob murders: Also one
Story resolution: Just get a guy who’s even bigger to win the day

Project Wolf Hunting (2022)
Korean

Director: Kim Hong-sun
Writer: Kim Hong-sun

Seo In-guk – Jong-doo
Jang Dong-yoon – Do-il
Choi Gwi-hwa – Alpha
Sung Dong-il – Oh Dae-woong
Park Ho-san – Doctor Lee
Ko Chang-seok – Go Kun-bae
Jang Young-nam – Myeong-ju
Son Jong-hak – Soo-cheol
Lee Sung-wook – Kyung-ho
Hong Ji-yoon – Ji-eun
Jung Moon-sung – Kyu-tae
Lim Ju-hwan – Director
Kwon Soo-hyun – Kang-woo
Jung Sung-il – Detective Jung