Essentially playing himself, Oh Tae-kyung is a washed-up actor who capitalises on his past role as the younger version of Choi Min-sik’s protagonist in Park Chan-wook’s OldBoy (2003) to create the online persona ‘Lil Daesu’ for his new YouTube channel ‘Oh!’ where he promises, in his own inimitably schlubby way, to solve subscribers’ problems. When user ‘Bulldog’ offers a monetary reward if Oh can discover the backstory of a mute young man who every day in a public square holds up a placard with the message “I haven’t done anything”, the former thespian turns his channel, and ‘Picketing Man’, into a viral sensation. 

Much as Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018), co-written by Park Sang-min, was ‘found footage’, this is ‘screenlife’, confining itself to clips on a computer’s or phone’s screen, with the medium part of the cynically satirical message on the emptiness of celebrity and the malleability of mediated reality.

Anton Bitel