Tunnel

"Inept officials, crumbling second-rate infrastructure, bad cellphone reception, shonky builders, and useless media - add a housing crisis, and the Korea seen in Tunnel will be eerily familiar to Kiwis. Seong-Hoon Kim’s ultra-watchable thriller sees a car salesman trapped in a tunnel through the hilly countryside, a familiar premise, but one that extracts maximum value from it. As Jung-Soo (Jung-Woo Ha) gets to grips with his predicament, there’s scant time to ponder the impact of shoddy concrete or counterfeit steel on New Zealand roads. That tunnel (and those extraction fans), though, will be very familiar to many local drivers..."

"A lean, enjoyable disaster story that happily spends more time focusing on character than spectacle, though visual effects are impressive."

"[There's] a lot to juggle, and Kim handles it effectively while delivering, bottom line, a harrowing spectacle that makes one forget to breathe."

"A marriage of director Kim Seong-Hoon’s dark humour and social critique, Tunnel smartly probes some of the problems in Korea surrounding the issue of public safety."

"There's not enough story here to warrant the film's more than two-hour running time; 90 taut minutes tracking a week in the ruined tunnel would have sufficed. Still, it's a vivid and relatable tale."

"Despite rarely appearing all together in the film, Ha, Oh and Bae exhibit an undeniable chemistry that is consistently palpable and carried well throughout the movie."

"Infusing its nightmarish scenario with bracing doses of satirical humor, Tunnel is smarter and more sophisticated than most Hollywood attempts at the genre."