Alternatingly abhorrent and baffling. The setup is mostly fine but it really falls apart in the second half. The characters don't make any logical sense and the ending tries for catharsis in a truly nonsensical way.
A bus full of children mysteriously vanishes. When an altered version of a grieving mother's son returns years later, she must grapple with the technologically revised reality she has created.
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Alternatingly abhorrent and baffling. The setup is mostly fine but it really falls apart in the second half. The characters don't make any logical sense and the ending tries for catharsis in a truly nonsensical way.
Please for the love of god stop trying to make us sympathize with ai child bots.
Sang-ho’s Paradise Lost is an awkward, frustratingly inert blend of underdeveloped ideas about AI and familiar thriller mechanics. It concerns single mother So-young (Kim Hyun-joo, Hellbound), who spends nine years grieving the sudden disappearance of her son Sun-woo, only for him to mysteriously reappear as an adult. When he returns, he learns that in the ensuing years, So-young, desperate and alone, replaced him with a virtual reality version of himself. The returned Sun-woo, however, also has secrets of his own. Psychologically unconvincing and narratively muddled, Paradise Lost lacks the insight to make the most of its potentially provocative premise. [full review via Screen Daily]
Paradise Lost follows a grieving mother whose son returns years after a mysterious bus disappearance, forcing her to confront a technologically revised reality shaped by artificial intelligence.
Paradise Lost was directed by Yeon Sang-ho in 2026, a South Korean filmmaker known for Train to Busan.
Paradise Lost is rated KR 15 in South Korea.
