Five economic chapters, told in reverse order, stage pivotal moments in the breakdown of a Korean migrant family’s hopes for a better life in New Jersey, as Chi-hoon (Seo Young-joo), his sister Yoon-ju (Kim Soo-jin) and older brother-in-law Moon-suk (Lee Soon-won) say things that cannot be unsaid, do things that cannot be undone, and open and close different doors. Here the American dream of prosperity proves as much poison (and prison) as incentive, tearing the second generation of this once close-knit clan apart. 

Writer/director Chang Hang-jun has crafted a taut neo noir, complete with a femme fatale and a treacherously murderous plot. At a spare 72 minutes, this uses its structure of nested narratives to throw its revelations of character into chaotic disorder, and to show causation moving in purposeful, if mysterious ways, as guilty intentions are as inevitably – if only eventually – punished as guilty actions.  

Anton Bitel