Connect Movie May 2026

Dong-soo, now effectively connected to the killer’s vision, teams up with a resourceful and mysterious hacker (Kim Hye-jun) to stop the next murder. The premise is pure high-concept gold: a horror-thriller where the victim must literally see through the eyes of his predator. From the first frame, Connect looks like a graphic novel come to life. Miike’s direction is audacious. The color palette shifts from cold, clinical blues (in the organ-harvesting facility) to the warm, sickly reds and yellows of the killer’s art studio. The cinematography is stunning, using dutch angles, extreme close-ups, and surreal transitions that feel like a live-action manga.

The body horror is top-tier. Miike doesn’t hold back. Eye-gouging, impalement, and the killer’s “art” are depicted with a gleefully disturbing attention to detail. It’s violent, but it’s never purely sadistic—it serves the theme of disconnection and lost humanity. connect movie

The finale is also divisive. Without spoilers, it abandons the tight thriller structure for a bombastic, almost video-game-like boss fight. It’s cool to watch, but it feels thematically disconnected from the intimate horror of the first two episodes. Connect is not a masterpiece. It’s messy, illogical, and occasionally boring. The plot holes are big enough to drive a truck through. But here’s the thing: you won’t forget it. Jung Hae-in proves he can do more than romantic leads, suffering with raw, silent intensity. Go Kyung-pyo creates one of the most unsettling villains in recent K-content history. And Takashi Miike injects every frame with a punk-rock energy that most mainstream series lack. Miike’s direction is audacious

More frustratingly, the rules of the “connect” ability are never properly defined. Sometimes Dong-soo sees everything Jin-seok sees in real-time. Other times, he gets random, delayed flashes. The series introduces a supernatural “immortality” element (Dong-soo can regenerate limbs) but then forgets about it for entire episodes. For a show built on a clever gimmick, the inconsistency is maddening. The body horror is top-tier

But the true highlight is Go Kyung-pyo as Oh Jin-seok, the killer. Known for his lovable, goofy roles in K-dramas ( Reply 1988 , Chicago Typewriter ), Go delivers a jaw-dropping transformation. He plays Jin-seok as a smiling, soft-spoken psychopath who genuinely believes he’s an artist. He’s not a hulking brute; he’s a charming, fragile-looking man who will calmly discuss the color of your blood before painting with it. It’s a career-defining villain turn. Connect is only six episodes, but it feels both too short and too long. The middle episodes (3-4) drag significantly, focusing on repetitive cat-and-mouse chases and underwhelming subplots. The hacker character, despite the actress’s best efforts, is underwritten—her motivations are vague, and she often acts illogically to move the plot forward.

There’s no director quite like Takashi Miike ( Audition, Ichi the Killer, 13 Assassins ). He can turn a simple premise into a surreal, violent fever dream. So when the legendary Japanese filmmaker takes on a Korean-produced sci-fi thriller for Disney+, expectations are unusual. Connect doesn’t disappoint in its weirdness, but it does stumble in its ambition. The result is a series that is frustratingly uneven, yet utterly unforgettable. The story follows Ha Dong-soo (Jung Hae-in), a young man who is kidnapped by a sinister organ-harvesting ring. After having his eye removed, he wakes up in a bathtub full of ice, only to discover a horrifying side effect: he can now see through the eye that was taken from him. That eye has been transplanted into a brutal serial killer named Oh Jin-seok (Go Kyung-pyo), who calls himself a “new human” and paints grotesque artworks with his victims’ blood.