Okja · reception & legacy

2017 · Bong Joon Ho

How Okja has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

In 2017 Okja was almost swallowed by the noise around it — booed at Cannes for its Netflix logo and treated as a proxy war over streaming. Post-Parasite, it's been happily reappraised as vintage Bong: the tonal whiplash people once called messy now reads as the point.

What's debated

The forever-debate is Jake Gyllenhaal's shrieking, dialled-to-eleven performance — inspired gonzo choice or the one thing that breaks the movie, with no middle ground on Letterboxd.

Its footprint

It's the film famous for making viewers swear off pork, and its Cannes premiere became the flashpoint that pushed the festival to require theatrical releases for competition films — Okja is now shorthand for the whole streaming-vs-cinema fight.

Where it stands

A canon climber: once the 'minor' Netflix one in Bong's filmography, now a beloved gateway drug that completists rank higher every year.

★ Did you know? At its Cannes 2017 premiere the film was booed when the Netflix logo appeared, then the screening had to be stopped and restarted because a projection error cropped the opening minutes in the wrong aspect ratio.

Named by the director

Influences Bong Joon Ho has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

Babe: Pig in the City (1998) — Bong has repeatedly called George Miller's dark pig odyssey a masterpiece and cited it in connection with Okja's mix of creature whimsy and urban cruelty.