Paradise Lost

PARADISE LOST 실낙원 (2026)

From KDramas to blockbuster films, and everything in between, director Yeon Sang-ho has become one of my can't miss filmmakers in any format of storytelling.

The thing is, even if he's can't miss in my books, sometimes his projects can miss the mark, but not for a lack of ambition.
PARADISE LOST is his latest work, an adaptation of Oh Sung-eun's novel Black Inferno, following a grief-stricken mother who turns to an Al surrogate to fill the void left by her son, who was kidnapped alongside his classmates during a school field trip.

Nine years later, her life has seemingly found a semblance of normalcy. That is, until an unexpected return threatens to unravel everything she's built in the aftermath.

For those who don't know, Yeon Sang-ho is the filmmaker behind one of the greatest Korean films of all time, Train to Busan (2016), one of my personal favourite K-dramas and the criminally underrated Hellbound (2021), and, most recently, the live-action anime adaptation Parasyte: The Grey (2024).

Those stories are steeped in more of a otherworldly horror, whereas PARADISE LOST takes a much more grounded approach. It explores a mother desperately trying to reconcile the gut-wrenching news that someone she believed would be in her life forever was suddenly taken away, forcing her to construct an alternate reality just to find a way to live with the waking nightmare she was left behind in.

The film plays like an expanded version of the Black Mirror episode 'Be Right Back', where the digital footprint of someone's existence becomes a means of coping with the loss of a loved one. But unlike that episode, PARADISE LOST is less concerned with the ethics of recreating someone through technology and more interested in the emotional baggage of becoming dependent on something intangible, something that can never truly bring that person back.

Actress Kim Hyun-joo brings an incredible amount of emotional weight to the role, making those moments between mother and son feel genuinely affecting. There's something particularly compelling about watching their relationship unfold, almost like a case study that leaves you questioning whether you'd do the same for someone you couldn't bear to lose.

Unfortunately, when a certain character re-enters the picture, the film gradually loses sight of what I found to be its most compelling through line: our relationship with digital spaces and the increasingly complicated implications of using someone's real-life identity to construct an Al surrogate.

It reminded me quite a bit of Yeon's Revelations (2025), where the premise initially draws you in and leaves you completely locked into what's unfolding, only for it to shoehorn in too many combating character motivations that eventually unravel the very hook that made the story so compelling in the first place.

This a mixed bag of a parents love for their child being infinitely endless, even when they have every reason to give up, which works, and then an investigation that kinda falls by the wayside and completely fizzles out.

The further we get into the Al space, the larger our digital footprint becomes the more likely we are to live in a world where something like PARADISE LOST exists. And therein lies the film's most compelling quality.

Between its unsettlingly relevant premise and Kim Hyun-joo's emotionally committed performance, there's plenty here to connect with. Whether the film's other narrative thread flatlines your interest entirely is another story.

Enjoy!

6.8/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 1hr40mins

Where: Now Playing In Theatres

The Richmond Reviewer Paradise Lost Review - November 5th, 2026.