General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

A Normal Family (보통의 가족)

A Normal Family (보통의 가족) is a 2024 South Korean suspense drama directed by Hur Jin-ho (허진호), adapted from the Dutch writer Herman Koch's best-selling novel The Dinner (Het Diner). It stars Sul Kyung-gu, Jang Dong-gun, Kim Hee-ae, and Claudia Kim as two brothers and their wives whose lives unravel after they watch CCTV footage of their teenage children committing a crime.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Directed by Hur Jin-ho; screenplay by Park Eun-kyo and Park Joon-seok²
Source	Based on Herman Koch's novel The Dinner, which had sold over 1 million copies with rights sold in 55 countries and had already been filmed in the Netherlands, Italy, and the United States³
Premiere	World premiere at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival, September 2023⁴
South Korean release	October 16, 2024, moved from October 9 to avoid competition with Love in the Big City and Joker: Folie à Deux¹
Running time	116 minutes in festival circulation; 109 minutes for the Korean theatrical release²^•⁵
Korean admissions	650,402 admissions, about $4.38 million gross on 1,277 screens⁵^•⁶
Critical recognition	The only Korean film named in Variety's "Best Films of 2025 (So Far)" list for its first-half North American releases⁷

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The film follows four people who have each lived by their own convictions as members of an apparently flawless upper-middle-class family circle. Jae-wan (Sul Kyung-gu) is a successful attorney who prioritizes material gain and does not hesitate to defend killers as part of his profession; his younger brother Jae-gyu (Jang Dong-gun) is a conscientious pediatrician who puts principle and his patients first.⁵^•⁸ In one storyline, Jae-wan accepts the defense of the son of a rich executive, a young man who hit a man with his car and left the man's daughter badly hurt, while Jae-gyu, the boy's pediatrician on the other side of the accident, cares for the wounded girl.⁸

The wives complete the two couples: Yeon-kyung (Kim Hee-ae) is a successful freelance translator who manages her children's education and her in-laws' care, and Ji-su (Claudia Kim) raises a young baby, keeps strictly to self-management, and observes the family from its most detached angle, which the Yonhap review treats as the film's most "normal" character.⁵^•⁸ The turn comes when footage from a security camera shows the children committing a crime. In the Jerusalem Film Festival synopsis, a recording of a teenage boy and girl beating a homeless man to death spreads online and goes viral; the police investigation stalls because the attackers' faces cannot be identified, and when the women watch the footage they discover a surprising detail.⁹ The two couples arrive at a dinner carrying secrets that cannot be accepted, and their disagreements over whether the children should surrender to the authorities drive the suspense toward catastrophic choices.⁶^•⁷

Production and release history

The film was produced by Hive Media Corp, the company behind the ten-million-admission hit 12.12: The Day, with Hive and Mindmark distributing in South Korea.¹⁰^•⁵ It had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023 in the official selection's Special Screenings, and the report is that the film was edited after that premiere before its domestic release.⁸^•¹¹ This accounts for the two circulating running times: 116 minutes at festivals such as Palm Springs, the Festival des 3 Continents, and the Jerusalem Film Festival, and 109 minutes for the Korean theatrical version.²^•⁵

The Korean premiere was shifted twice in planning. It was first set for October 9, 2024, then pushed to October 16 after an enthusiastic response at the press screening, apparently to avoid clashing with Love in the Big City and Joker: Folie à Deux, which opened in South Korea on October 1.¹ Online distribution in Korea began on November 22, 2024, across IPTV, cable, and streaming platforms including Naver Series On, Wave, and Watcha, and later Disney Plus.¹²^•¹³

Festival circuit and overseas performance

Before its Korean opening, the film was invited to more than 19 international festivals, including the 48th Toronto International Film Festival, the 18th London Korean Film Festival, where it opened the event, the 26th Udine Far East Film Festival, the 44th Fantasporto, the 26th Taipei Film Festival as closing film, the 29th Busan International Film Festival, and the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes.¹⁴^•¹²^•⁶^•¹¹ Thierry Jobin, artistic director of Switzerland's Fribourg International Film Festival, called it not only the strongest of the four screen adaptations of The Dinner but among the most powerful recent Korean films.¹⁵

Its overseas theatrical run came later than the Korean one. Room 8 Films gave it a limited North American release on April 25, 2025, with director question-and-answer screenings in New York and Los Angeles; it opened in Japan in January 2025, France on June 11, 2025, and Brazil on May 1, 2025.¹⁶^•⁴ In France, distributed by Diaphana, it opened in 145 theaters with 51,126 admissions in its first week and then grew through word of mouth, adding screens in its third week and crossing 200,000 spectators in late July; it finished its run with 248,123 tickets sold, a result the French press attributed entirely to word of mouth and favorable reviews.¹⁷ On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 89 percent Tomatometer from 18 reviews.¹⁸

Box office and reception

In South Korea the film opened strongly for its scale. It took first place in the national weekly box office for October 14–20, 2024, passing Veteran 2 with cumulative admissions approaching 290,000 within its first week.¹⁹ Final domestic admissions were 650,402 on 1,277 screens, for a gross of about $4.38 million; the film ranked 40th among 2024 Korean releases by attendance.⁵^•²⁰

Korean critics praised its construction and its sting. Yonhap's review credited a tight narrative, convincing ensemble acting, and a questioning of elite morality, while noting that some scenes felt contrived and that the final twist might undercut the character development.¹⁰^•⁸ Reviewers abroad read the film as a parable about privilege and compromised ethics: the San Jose Mercury News gave it 3.5 of 4 stars for a multilayered look at how easily people compromise their professed ethics for family, and The New Indian Express wrote that the film questions parenting, society, and justice while treating normalcy itself as the anomaly.¹⁸ In mid-2025, Variety named it among the ten best films of the year to that point from North American releases, the only Korean film on the list, calling it a tense and morally agonizing drama.⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 2023–2024 films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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