Bong Joon-ho's INFLUENZA was commissioned as part of a 'Jeonju Digital Project', a set of three digitally-shot short subjects p compiled for the 2004 Jeonju International Film Festival. The other participants were Hong Kong's Yu Lik-Wai, and Japan's Sogo Ishii. Bong's standout contribution details the downward slide of an unemployed, and seemingly unemployable, 31-year-old Seoul man (Yoon Je-moon) into a life of increasingly violent robberies. The city's omnipresent CCTV and security cameras capture his every move and, eventually, his every murder, usually in the company of a nasty female companion (Go Su-hee) who's as greedy and remorseless as he is, their spree stitched together by the unseen authorities (a "mosaic documentary" as the director called it in an interview). The title presumably refers to random, similar acts of violence that occasionally and somewhat amusingly break out on the periphery of the main pair's activity. The production's cast is a mix of actors and real, unsuspecting citizens. The short was made after Bong's breakout hit MEMORIES OF MURDER, and prior to his even bigger smash THE HOST, and is very much part and parcel of those and most of his later works. He'd found his groove in features fairly quickly, so his success at channeling and compressing his notions about mankind in general and Korean society in particular into a short subject comes as no surprise. Mostly available via streaming sites years after its release, INFLUENZA finally saw the light of day in 2020 as a standalone DVD release in North America from Grasshopper Film. Regardless of the format, it's definitely worth viewing, but the disc might be better signed out from a well-stocked local library if you have one; otherwise the film and the supplements on the DVD (two press conferences and a teaser trailer) might have been better served as bonuses on, say, the Criterion release of MEMORIES OF MURDER. Either way, it's nice to have it available for those looking to fit a missing piece into their experience with the director's oeuvre.
