Kim Junghoon / South Korea / 2026 / 93min / Competition 

Three years after announcing her retirement from writing, horror novelist Suyeon (Roh Jeong-eui) reveals plans for a new book. Declaring that she is finally ready to “tell my own story,” Suyeon prepares to make her comeback. But those who know why she suffered from writer’s block express concern rather than encouragement. Suyeon herself is anxious, unable to find an ending for her novel. Meanwhile, her boyfriend Shinji (Sho Kasamatsu) arrives in Korea to spend the holidays with her. Their destination is the studio once used by Suyeon’s late father (Son Byung-ho), a place that still bears traces of his presence. In this strangely unsettling space, Shinji cuts his face on an old razor. From the moment he is injured, his personality undergoes a disturbing transformation, reopening wounds that Suyeon has kept buried for the past three years. The mystery horror film Shaving explores fear on multiple levels. The first is the terror of bodily possession. The film meticulously depicts the horror of a trusted lover who looks exactly the same but begins treating his partner with the hostility of an unfamiliar, threatening presence, as a subtle sense of unease gradually consumes everyday life. Embedded within this premise are various manifestations of toxic masculinity that seeks to dominate intimate relationships, as well as the troubling dynamics of dating violence, in which a woman’s experience of abuse is dismissed as fabrication or misperception. Following his infection through the razor, Shinji’s appearance becomes distorted and disfigured, resembling the figures in Francis Bacon’s paintings. The creature design, rarely seen in Korean cinema, delivers precisely the kind of visual shock audiences might expect. The film’s final 30 minutes, which spiral relentlessly out of control with little regard for causality or the laws of physics, recall the Charlie Kaufman esque strain of horror that evokes existential anxiety by scattering fragments of the inner self across distorted spaces and multiple faces. This is director Kim Junghoon’s first feature in 13 years, following Wild Dogs (2013).