If you are into South Korean movies and series — it would be foolish not to be, in this day and age — then Netflix’s Wall to Wall (also known by the alternate title 84 Square Metres) is the movie for you. In fact, it should be on your list, even if you are not into South Korean content.

The story hits especially hard for apartment owners. Noh Woo-Sung (Kang Ha-Neul, known for his roles in Squid Game and Forgotten) is a ‘house poor’, an actual term used for struggling individuals who own a house in Korea). He is a single, young-ish man from a small town who wants to make it in the big city, and he has leveraged every last asset to his name to acquire an apartment in Seoul.

Three years later, his life is the definition of suffocation: his apartment has no furniture, light or air. The lack of these basic necessities of living comes from Woo-Sung’s decision to cut down on his spending, since the apartment has put him under a mountain of debt.

When Woo-Sung finally turns on his air-conditioner late in the film, you feel for him — by now he’s lost too much in a weird psychological game of cat-and-mouse that redefines conventional thrillers.

Despite being far-fetched at times, Wall to Wall is a fascinating South Korean film filled with plenty of twists and turns

South Korean filmmakers have a knack for the genre, and their approach to crafting narratives, using the four-part screenwriting method known as giseungjeongyeol lends itself to the unconventional, un-Hollywood feel one gets when watching the film. Rather than let makeshift situations drive the story, in South Korean cinema, it is the protagonist — usually mired in insurmountable circumstances — whose actions force him into a state of fight or flight.

For Woo-Sung, the problem that sends him into a frenzy is something apartment owners can empathise with: the sound of the upstairs neighbour disturbing your flow.

The sound of a hammer, of someone playing with marbles, of furniture being dragged, or a child’s toy car moving across the floor above your head can be infuriating. Woo-Sung gets an additional problem: the blaring sound of the stereo, that leads to communal uproar, and murders.

The sound comes from the upper floor, or the floor above that, or the one above that, or maybe the floor below. As in real life, no one owns up to the reverberations. As a character in the film states: “Noise between floors is a human problem. Why blame the building?”

Screenwriter-director Kim Tae-Joon (Unlocked) uses the familiar to take the story into unthinkable and sometimes preposterous directions. Woo-Sung’s inability to see past his own self-imposed choke-holds makes him a pitiable victim and a liability when the story becomes a whodunit thriller that’s grounded in real world issues of today: the fleeting value of commodity and one’s sense of self in today’s dog-eat-dog world, where one is so engulfed in man-made problems that one cannot even see the roses, let alone stopping to smell them. Despite being far-fetched at times, Wall to Wall is fascinating nonetheless.

Streaming on Netflix, Wall to Wall is rated suitable for ages 16 and above, and has scenes of intense mental anguish that erupt into violence

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 27th, 2025