Review of Barking Dogs Never Bite / 플란다스의 개, directed by Bong Joon-ho

I always remember that when I began college, just having moved to New York City after a brief stint living with a host family in Anyang, South Korea, I clung to what I wanted to learn in Korea. I signed up for a 300 level Contemporary Korean cinema class because of that, where I watched many of the directors I’ve come to love and admire today.

It was during my sophomore year of college that the Lincoln Center theatre was having screening of early 2000s Korean movies, and I immediately bought tickets to two movies: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance by Park Chan-wook, which I have reviewed somewhere on this blog, and another ticket to Bong Joon-ho’s Barking Dogs Never Bite.

At the time, I had no idea what this movie was about. I’d read the synopsis on the ticket website, and I knew I had seen most of Bong’s movies by this point. Parasite had just come out and I saw it four times, even seeing Bong and Song Kang-ho up close at IFC Center at a talkback.

And man, when I came to the Walter Reade Theatre to see this movie, I was in for a surprise. I came out very curious about what I had just watched, and judging some of the students around me, I could tell I was not the only one who hadn’t looked up the plot.

Let’s get into the review!

A man becomes annoyed at dogs barking in his apartment complex to the point of contemplating murder.

In this movie, the main character is an unemployed academic named Yoon-ju. He lives with his pregnant wife in a rather unassuming apartment complex in Korea, which, judging from the outside, looks the exact same as so many other apartment complexes that line Korea’s horion.

Yoon-ju is looking for a job as a university professor to get an income coming in, and he also doesn’t have the best relationship with his wife right now. She also really wants a dog, but Yoon-ju is being driven made by one of his neighbor’s dogs barking constantly.

When he finds a Shih Tzu all by itself one day, he grabs the dog and takes it into the basement. He decides to kill it by hanging, but can’t bring himself to do it and instead locks it inside of what looks to be a cabinet. The apartment complex’s custodian, Hyun-nam, is then approached by a little girl who wants to find her missing dog—turns out the Shih Tzu is hers.

Yoon-ju, having headed back to the apartment, continues hearing the barking. He realizes it was the dog belonging to an old woman, and then he decides to free the dog he captured because that wasn’t the source of the problem. Yoon-ju watches as a janitor comes in and then eats the dog he had locked inside the chest, as it had already died in there.

This doesn’t deter him, and he steals the old woman’s dog the very next day. Hyun-nam watches as he throws it off the root, and she decides to chase after him. She doesn’t grab him in time, and then she decides to get the dog’s body and give it back to the old woman, who then promptly passes out.

She asks the janitor to bury the body, but then the guy takes it to the basement to eat it. Yoon-ju is horrified when his wife then comes home with a poodle, and she seems to love it more than she did him. He then loses the dog while in the park, and he yells at her about money when she confronts him about it.

His wife, now crying, tells him she used her severance pay and planned to give him the rest. Feeling bad, he then puts up flyers all over the apartment complex, but he gives up pretty quickly. The older woman from before dies, and Hyun-nam discovers a homeless man with Yoon-ju’s dog, as he wants to eat her.

She grabs the dog and runs, and the homeless man is arrested by the police. She’s pretty disappointed when this doesn’t make her famous on television, and she’s fired for her heroism. Turns out she spent more time chasing missing dogs.

Yoon-ju is drunk on the sidewalk when she finds him after that, and he confesses he was the one who killed the old woman’s dog. The movie ends with him eventually becoming a professor, and Hyun-nam going on a hike.

Overall Thoughts

If you don’t know what you’re getting into, and are not familiar with Bong’s early work, this might not be the movie for you. Personally, I enjoyed it a lot, but I don’t consider it to be one of his best movies for sure.

I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t know if I would pay money to see it in a theater again. I would go for one of his later movies and stream this one at home if I could find it on one of the platforms.

That said, my opinion might differ from yours, and that’s okay! Taste and opinions are definitely subjective at the end of the day, especially when it comes to film.

Go watch this one if you haven’t already and are interested in doing so.

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.