How would you react if you found yourself victim to a natural disaster? Would you be one of the heroes, like Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow? In the face of danger, people can do crazy things. This is heavily explored with an artistic and gritty brush in a new film out of South Korea, aptly titled Concrete Utopia, which has been submitted as the country’s International Feature selection for the upcoming Academy Awards. From director Um Tae-hwa (Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned), the new disaster film takes place in Seoul after a massive earthquake has virtually destroyed the entire city.

That is, except for one giant apartment complex that still stands firm. The residents inside struggle to keep themselves fed and hydrated, while the city’s inhabitants outside the building slowly creep closer and closer to try and make room for themselves. Of course, it’s not exactly warm and sunny outside, so shelter is a necessity now more than ever. Fights break out, leaders are elected, ideas clash. It all makes for an entertaining thriller that turns ever more psychologically unnerving as the story progresses.

Through a translator, we recently caught up with director Tae-hwa to learn more about how he achieved such impressive natural-disaster visuals and what past films or books may have inspired his fictional tale.

Keeping a ‘Realistic Tone’ in a Natural-Disaster Film

Mother Nature strikes, and it’s not a castle, arena, mansion, or industrial property that withstands the disaster — but rather, an apartment building. In effect, Concrete Utopia becomes a greater statement about humanity and the importance of a “neighborly community” on top of the disaster-movie tropes. “I’ve always been very interested in the apartment as a dwelling place in Korea,” Tae-hwa told MovieWeb, adding:

“I was wondering why they keep building the apartments and why they all look the same. So while I was thinking about that, I came upon this webtoon called Cheerful Outsider, which has the background of everything being collapsed and an apartment building remains. And I thought that setup was very interesting, and that’s how the story began.”

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Virtually the entire storyline of Concrete Utopia takes place after the earthquake strikes, but Tae-hwa also captures the moment of impact in a jaw-dropping flashback sequence. We see lead character Min-sung (Park Seo-joon) try to escape the horrifying collapse of the surrounding city, so he makes a run for it and tries to drive off. But then, his car is caught in a sort of snowball effect, and Tae-hwa puts the camera right inside Min-sung’s vehicle as it tumbles along. He spoke about how they were able to pull off this spectacular sequence:

“Technically, it wasn’t a very difficult scene to film. The car was on these devices in the shape of the car, the automobile, and the camera was sitting from the outside. So I think the actor might have had a hard time inside, but technically, filming that wasn’t very difficult. But after the filming, during the post-production, the computer graphic work was what we really focused on, because looking at the whole movie as a disaster scene, we have to keep the realistic tone of the film. And we don’t want the computer graphics to look like computer graphics or look too cartoonish. So that was where we focused on, to keep the tone of the film.”

The idea of realism is felt all throughout the film, despite the greater-than-humanity circumstances that plague the community we watch. Concrete Utopia makes us feel like we’re right in on the action, watching realistic, seemingly non-heroic characters try to navigate a now-apocalyptic society. “The fundamental sentiment in the film, when it comes to disaster, was fear,” said Tae-hwa. “And instead of just using it as an entertainment channel, I wanted the audiences and the characters in this disaster to look more realistic.”

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Inspirations and That Standout ‘Advertisement’ Scene
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While chock-full of unique story elements, such as the setting and the alternative way in which its residents react to danger in a wide variety of ways, Concrete Utopia also has shades of other past classics, both in film and literature. “Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies are some of my references,” Tae-hwa told us. “When I was filming the group of people, what I had in mind was Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, in terms of the camera angles. And I think I tried to reference the tone of that film as well.”

Besides that epic flashback scene, another memorable sequence in Concrete Utopia is that humorous, makeshift infomercial the complex’s residents create after they’re settled into their new way of living post-earthquake. Folks around me in the theater were laughing out loud at this stark shift in tone, albeit temporary. Says Tae-hwa:

“That was very intentionally planned from the very beginning. The concept comes from the advertisements of apartments in Korea, and in these advertisements, they talk about how good it is to live in these apartments. And it sort of pictures the apartments as a utopia. And I wanted to film this in [the perspective of] the residents of the bungalow apartments, to sort of tell people like how ‘amazing’ this place is. And it is a very familiar format of an advertisement for Korean audiences. So I thought that could sort of add to the satire as well.”

Looking ahead, Tae-hwa has future projects in the works on both the big and small screen. “I’m preparing a horror film right now, and it sort of goes hand-in-hand thematically with Concrete Utopia. It’s also about a dwelling place,” he said. “And also there’s a series [in the works], a thriller about K-Pop.”

In the meantime, Concrete Utopia will be in theaters in Los Angeles and New York on December 8, with a wide release on December 15. And if you’re a fan of Korean cinema and K-Dramas, check out our list of the best Korean TV shows of 2023 below: