SINGAPORE – South Korean hit zombie movie Train To Busan’s (2016) director Yeon Sang-ho may no longer be chasing down the undead, but he is back with a new category of terrifying monsters – alien parasites. 

The 45-year-old film-maker helms the K-drama series Parasyte: The Grey, an adaptation of Japanese science-fiction horror manga series Parasyte (1989 to 1994) by Hitoshi Iwaaki. It premieres on Netflix on April 5.

In Parasyte: The Grey, alien parasites land on Earth, worm their way into human brains and then take complete control. These parasite-infested humans appear no different from others, but the parasites can extend out of their host’s face to attack and kill other humans.

It centres on supermarket employee Su-in (Jeon So-nee), who enters into a bizarre co-existence with her parasite when it fails to take over her brain.

In a Zoom interview with The Straits Times, Yeon says: “Parasyte is of the body-snatcher genre, which tackles the fear of something or someone you’re familiar with turning out to be completely different from what you think it is.

“There are people we hold dear, whom we think we know well, but they could turn out to be completely different. It’s allegorical of the kind of fear we live with in our daily lives.”

Body-snatching is a horror trope that involves a person’s body being taken over by foreign intelligence.

Yeon is a trendsetter in South Korea, who helped to kick-start the craze of science-fiction horror in his home country. 

Train To Busan is among South Korea’s highest-grossing domestic films and it had an international box-office haul of US$92.7 million (S$125 million). In the wake of its runaway success, zombies and other monsters became a trend in K-media.

Examples include period zombie drama Kingdom (2019 to 2020), high school zombie drama All Of Us Are Dead (2022 to present), zombie film #Alive (2020) and apocalyptic monster series Sweet Home (2020 to present). 

Yeon’s own follow-up contribution was the dark fantasy Hellbound (2021 to present), about supernatural monsters condemning humans to hell.

With so many series and films in the genre, will audiences tire of fighting monsters and fending off zombies?

Yeon thinks not, as science fiction and horror are anchored in the innate human fear of the unknown.

“There are definitely different ways of approaching the material and different methods of expression, but the secret to making sure people don’t get tired of the genre is to understand the fear that people in contemporary times hold within themselves,” he says.

With Parasyte: The Grey, Yeon is bringing something new to old material. A huge fan of the manga, which had previously been adapted into anime and films, he had the blessings of creator Iwaaki to set his series in South Korea with new characters.

Yeon, who began his career as an animation director, says: “When I was studying manga and animation, Parasyte was like a bible to us. I was deeply immersed in its universe and, when you fall into a work like that, you expand your imagination and I began thinking about what it would be like if the series were set in South Korea.”

He teases a large-scale, 20-minute fight scene over a bridge in the fourth episode of the six-part show. He calls the “action-packed and visual effects-heavy” sequence the most challenging one to shoot. The crew had to build a large open set since the scene could not be filmed on an actual bridge.

He says: “Any scene with the parasites is challenging because they don’t exist in real life, yet things have to physically respond to their actions. For example, things have to fall over when the parasite strikes them.” 

• Parasyte: The Grey premieres on Netflix on April 5.