For the past decade, horror filmmakers have regularly turned to the 1980s for both inspiration and aesthetics. But what could the genre look like when our industry ages into nineties nostalgia? The answer probably looks a lot like Kim Tae-gon’s Project Silence, a disaster-themed horror movie that brings to mind some of the best mid-budget blockbusters of the decade. By straddling two genres, Project Silence is able to create a fun piece of confection that nevertheless contains much of the timeliness of Hollywood's disaster cinema.
Project Silence opens on a cabinet meeting, where presidential advisor Cha Jung-won (Lee Sun-kyun) argues against military intervention in a hostage situation. There are no outcomes favorable to the upcoming election, he explains, noting that his only priority should be the needs of the half-country that voted for him. After the other advisors storm out, Cha is praised by his candidate, Jung Hyun-baek (Kim Tae-woo), who thanks him and promises him some additional financial support for his daughter’s studies abroad.
But soon, Cha finds himself taking a more hands-on approach to tragedy. When the advisor and his daughter head to the airport, they and dozens more commuters get stuck on a nearby bridge. They are not alone – also being transported is an experimental canine unit, the result of a secret military operation meant to train dogs to act as targeted assassins. Soon Cha and a handful of fellow survivors find themselves trapped on a collapsing bridge with a pack of wild canine superdogs picking them off one by one.
In a 2014 conversation at The Dissolve, film critic Genevieve Koski described disaster movies as horror films for the everyman, noting both genres feature a “matching set of moral complications, based in deriving pleasure from the suffering of fellow human beings.” It would be interesting to see this conversation revisited for this film; the line between disaster and horror is considerably more blurred in Project Silence. While the addition of killer dogs might seem a bridge too far – pun intended – for some audiences, the mashup of these two genres ensures that audiences who might turn down horror can otherwise sell themselves on a disaster movie.
What horror brings to Project Silence is human intent. Many disaster movies are positioned as an act of god; even those that tie back to mankind are predicated on a causal chain of neglect, not active harm. When survivors must overcome a rogue wave or a forest fire, very little thought is given to the non-actions that might have made such a disaster possible. But in Project Silence, a scientist trained the dogs, and a soldier gave the order to kill. Call it an unnatural disaster if you want, but the film makes it clear that there is a human architect behind the death of over 100 civilians. Blending disaster with horror gives us all the spectacle of the former and all the culpability of the latter.
(As an added bonus, we also get several scenes where Kim Hee-won’s Doctor Yang, the lead scientist, pleads with the other survivors not to put this on him. That he was just a canine researcher and had no choice but to follow orders. Not a lot of natural disasters out there trying on the Nuremberg defense for size.)
As silly as the whole affair is, there may be a spark of the divine in how Project Silence wields the best elements of both genres. While the aforementioned Dissolve writer points to our increasingly connected world as evidence that the disaster movie has lost its relevance – with YouTube providing more authentic disasters each day than Hollywood could ever hope to imagine – the horror genre has always afforded us simplicity. It’s no surprise that Hollywood is seeing a resurgence in slashers; these films reduce the concept of horror to something tangible. We might not have the means to disrupt the systems propping up climate change or genocide, but we can picture ourselves “solving” a serial killer if we hit them with our car enough times.
So, too, does Project Silence reduce its political message down to a bite-sized morsel. We live in an era where the gap between what is right and what is politically expedient has never been bigger, at least in the eyes of the so-called experts. The film may reduce that commentary to something cartoonishly simple – it’s probably not great that a politician would rather win reelection than protect people from killer dogs – but there’s also something to be said for the fact that Project Silence taps into this sentiment at all. Frustration about our politicians’ priorities is such a populist sentiment that it can serve as the framework for a goofball disaster movie.
When done well, this blend of horror and disaster movie offers the best of both worlds: the systemic anxieties of the disaster movie with the grotesque deaths of the horror genre. In an era where our fears seem too big to be confined to a single screen – where even a country like the United States cannot figure out a way to steer into the skid – combining catastrophic issues with human monsters feels like the easiest form of catharsis. As silly as its premise may seem, Project Silence feels less like a callous cash grab and more like a resurgence of a mode of storytelling made for our moment.
One must imagine Project Silence hit especially hard for South Korea, as it was mere months after the release of the film that President Yoon Suk Yeol issued an unlawful declaration of martial law. But even watching it in 2025, half-a-world away, there is something satisfying about seeing a shitheel politician protagonist learn a lesson in basic empathy. Perhaps it’s time to update that old political adage, then. Goodbye face-eating leopards; I cannot believe that the canine assassins I trained would dare try to assassinate me.
