Mother review

When simpleton Do-joon (Bin Won) is accused of murder, his over-protective ma (Kim Hye-ja) goes all out to prove his innocence. Trouble is, she’s a few screws loose herself...

Korean maestro Bong Joon-ho’s (The Host) playfully off-kilter Hitchcockian thriller refuses to play by genre rules, stir-frying slow-burn menace and Freudian drama into unpredictable combinations.

If the detective plot is overly contrived… well, so were many of Hitchcock’s. Still, there’s ample conviction in Hye-ja’s pitch-perfect anti-heroine, a model of frazzled motherhood worthy of Joan Crawford.