Rising star Minha Kim reveals her first leading role since her breakthrough role in AppleTV+’s prestigious drama series Pachinko, playing a young woman accused of murdering a best-selling author in Chun Sun-young’s feature directorial debut A Girl with Closed Eyes. Premiering at the Busan International Film Festival, the film unfolds as a polished crime thriller buoyed by a series of strong performances, not least from Kim and Choi Hee-seo, but ultimately let down by some wildly improbable plot twists.

Set in the South Korean mountain region of Hongcheon, A Girl with Closed Eyes opens when a young woman calling herself Min-ju (Kim) is caught, smoking gun literally in hand, standing over the bloodied corpse of acclaimed writer Jeong Sang-woo (Lee Ki-woo). Taken in for questioning, she claims that Jeong was responsible for an unsolved kidnapping case from 20 years earlier that served as the inspiration for his best-selling novel. She also reveals that she is actually Lee In-seon, the young girl at the center of the kidnapping, but she will only explain herself further to her former classmate Park Min-ju (Choi), a detective with the Seoul police who has recently made headlines for blowing the whistle on her superiors.

Park reluctantly returns home to talk to her estranged friend, and soon a cascade of secrets, both past and present, muddies the waters of their relationship, throwing everything to do with this seemingly open-and-shut case out the window. Adding to the confusion is Jeong’s publisher, citing growing public unrest, demanding swift justice for the deceased celebrity, and Lee’s swift conviction for his murder.

A Girl with Closed Eyes wears its many cinematic influences proudly on its sleeve, almost like a badge of honor. Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder is an obvious touchstone for its central premise of the sophisticated urban cop taking on the more backward approach to small-town law enforcement. Jung Byung-gil's Confession of Murder, in which a serial killer publishes a book based on his own crimes, casts a similarly long shadow over Chun's work. Stephen King's Misery and Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden also receive rave reviews.