General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Project Wolf Hunting (늑대사냥)

Project Wolf Hunting (늑대사냥, Neukdaesanyang) is a 2022 South Korean action-horror film directed by Kim Hong-sun, in which dangerous convicts being shipped from the Philippines to South Korea stage a bloody riot aboard a cargo ship, only to face a superhuman creature secretly held below deck.¹^•² It premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, opened in South Korean theaters on September 21, 2022, and won two awards at the 55th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	늑대사냥 (Neukdaesanyang, "wolf hunt")⁴
Director and writers	Kim Hong-sun (born 1976), screenplay by Kim Hong-sun and Jo Soo-bin¹
Release	World premiere at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, TIFF; South Korea September 21, 2022; United States October 7, 2022 (Well Go USA)³^•²
Runtime and rating	121–122 minutes; rated 19 in South Korea, Not Rated in the US³^•²
Box office (South Korea)	1,226 screens; 458,720 admissions; total gross about $3.46 million³
International sales	Pre-sold to 41 countries, including Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Russia, India, the United States, and Japan⁵
Awards	Special Jury Prize and Best Special Effects Award at the 55th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival (2022)³

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The story begins with a government operation to move its most dangerous criminals home. After a bomb goes off at an airport during a prisoner transfer, the South Korean authorities place their worst offenders, including crime bosses, aboard a cargo ship for the voyage from the Philippines to Busan, under heavily armed guard.²^•⁶

The convicts, led by the unrepentant serial killer Park Jong-du (Seo In-guk), escape their restraints and seize the 58,000-ton vessel in a coordinated, extremely violent mutiny.⁷^•⁸ Their campaign of terror awakens something worse: a superhumanly strong humanoid called Alpha (Choi Gwi-hwa), transported under sedation in the ship's hold, whose eyelids are stapled shut and who hunts by heat vision.⁹ The film's title refers to a top-secret military experiment linking Alpha with the withdrawn prisoner Lee Do-il (Jang Dong-yoon), and one review describes the creature as tied to Japanese experimentation during World War 2.⁷^•¹⁰ Alpha's powers are explained only at the 84-minute mark of the 122-minute film.⁷

The large ensemble also includes Jung So-min as the police officer Ja-yeon, Sung Dong-il, Park Ho-san, Ko Chang-seok, and Jang Young-nam.¹¹^•¹²

Production and release

Kim Hong-sun directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Jo Soo-bin; Gu Sung-mok produced, and Contents G and cheum film were the production companies, with Finecut handling international sales.¹^•³ Kim's earlier features were Traffickers (2012), The Con Artists (2014), The Chase (2017), and Metamorphosis (2019).¹

The film's world premiere took place at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, the main theater of the Toronto International Film Festival, and it was pre-sold to 41 countries before that screening.³^•⁵ Well Go USA released it in North America on October 7, 2022, with an English dub and English subtitles.⁵^•² In South Korea it opened on September 21, 2022 on 1,226 screens and drew 458,720 admissions for a gross of about $3.46 million.³

Reception

Critical response. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 88% score from 51 reviews; IMDb users give it 6.1 out of 10.¹² Reviewers consistently singled out the gore. Slant Magazine called it "a gorehound's delight" and praised its "propulsive, single-minded sense of purpose to the film's commitment to gore," comparing its effect to dropping a Predator or a Terminator into Con Air.⁹ The Karlovy Vary festival program described it as a straightforward genre film told "in a meticulously crafted style that most similar B-movie projects can only dream of."¹

Criticism centered on pacing and story. The RogerEbert.com review called it "a sluggish, by-the-numbers body count flick" that resembles an overproduced video game, noting that the film's own press release compares it to a Capcom survival-horror game.⁷ A TIFF review found that the relentless action and violence "wear out their welcome to the point of exhaustion" over the two-hour runtime.¹³ Another TIFF review, while rating it 3 out of 5, credited Kim with making the large cast's many characters distinct before killing most of them off.⁶

Awards. At the 55th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in October 2022, the film won the Special Jury Prize and the Best Special Effects Award; Sitges is considered one of the world's top three fantastic film festivals.³ A Korean-language source also records a Best Feature Film award at Spain's Isla Calavera film festival in 2022.¹⁴

Home media and streaming

In the United States the film is available on subscription services including Amazon Prime Video, the Screambox Amazon Channel, Rakuten Viki, and the Hi-YAH Amazon Channel, and free with ads on Plex, Tubi TV, OnDemandKorea, and Amasian TV; it can also be rented or bought on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, and Fandango at Home, and purchased on DVD and Blu-ray.¹² On Netflix, a check of 25 regions in October 2026 found it available only in South Korea.¹⁵

Aftermath

The film ends with a setup for a sequel, a point several reviewers noted.⁷ Director Kim Hong-sun subsequently joined the production team of Gangs of London season 3 as its first Asian director and overall producer, according to a 2025 Korean press profile.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Action and adventure horror films

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

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