Critics reviews

The enthralling, serpentine crime drama Decision to Leave may be less overtly erotic than [Park's] last picture, The Handmaiden, but in its slinkily seductive way there’s a kinship between the two. Both films share an illicit fascination with the darkest impulses of the human soul.

It’s the kind of film that feels like, even after multiple viewings, it will still seem like a mystery – leaving you second-guessing and questioning plot points and little moments. What isn’t up for dispute, though, is how stunning the movie is... It’s both inventive and beautiful...

The narrative is structurally audacious, and regularly deploys flashbacks and clever cuts, and scenes within scenes. It’s also the most melancholic film of Park’s career...

[Decision to Leave] is absorbing and enigmatic, and there is a near-hypnotic rhythm to its editing style... Although this is a story of murder and death, it is also one of tenderness. Park is far more interested in the pain of the living than those who are dead and buried.

[T]he superlative new thriller from South Korean maestro Park Chan-wook... is at once needlepoint precise, and as woozy as 3am.

He’s at the top of his game here technically, employing precise editing and audaciously inventive camerawork to pull us into his characters’ minds.

A sumptuous romance... [Decision to Leave] is a force of nature... A classic noir pairing that Hitchcock himself would have been proud of.

If, despite numerous attempts, you still just don’t get it (guilty as charged), “Decision” will simply confirm what you’ve come to expect from the auteur: another movie in which style overwhelms substance.

[Decision to Leave] develops into a pretty nifty piece of genre work, a thriller that’s expertly made even if it doesn’t quite hum like the best Park films. The fact that a good, well-made thriller feels almost like a disappointment given this creator’s pedigree is just a testament to the work he’s produced before.

As a story, [Decision to Leave] lacks the verve and dynamism of his early action films. As a portrait of obsession and regret, it’s remarkably sophisticated and satisfying. Park still cares about obsession, driving anger, and suppressed sadness — all the things that preoccupied him as a younger filmmaker. He just expresses those interests differently now, with soft conversations in memorable places, instead of with the blunt end of a hammer.

[O]rnately and ingeniously plotted as it is, Decision to Leave is a wary, wounded love story first and a procedural puzzle second, powered by what seems a sincerely soulful attraction between two people who know nothing — but somehow see everything — of each other.

If the erotic thrillers of the past explored the dangers of lust, Park Chan-wook explores the risks of longing. His take on the genre isn’t just sexy; it’s playful and mordant and convoluted—and it begs to be rewatched, for the electrifying performances and for every frame he composes... Frame by frame, the best-looking movie of the year.