A Werewolf Boy

In the United States, Sun-yi, now in her sixties, receives a phone call about selling her old family home in South Korea. The news prompts a decision to return and confront the memories tied to the place, accompanied by her granddaughter Eun-joo. The trip sets a quiet, reflective journey that blends longing with a reckoning of the past.

Sun-yi travels back to South Korea with Eun-joo to the countryside home. They are greeted by the familiar landscape and a mix of anticipation and unease as they drive to the old house. The journey hints at a reunion and a chance to confront the past together.

In 1965, Sun-yi leaves Seoul with her widowed mother and sister Sun-ja for a remote valley. The family clings to genteel poverty under a harsh landlord system led by Ji-tae. The move marks the beginning of a fragile refuge where Sun-yi's delicate health makes her feel apart from the world.

The valley offers a shield against a life that has demanded too much from Sun-yi's body. She navigates isolation as a quiet, introverted girl, finding small comforts in the rough life. The setting tightens the sense of vulnerability she carries.

One day a feral nineteen-year-old boy, illiterate and unreadable, emerges in their yard. Sun-yi's mother takes him in, naming him Chul-soo, believing he is a war orphan. The act seeds a fragile bond as she begins to guide him toward small, humane routines.

Sun-yi gently educates Chul-soo, teaching him to wait for meals, wear clothes, speak, and write. Their bond grows from wary tolerance to something resembling kinship, a beacon in the harsh village landscape. The valley becomes their shared sanctuary.

Ji-tae's envy and the landlord's cruelty intensify as the town's fear grows around Sun-yi and Chul-soo. The pair face escalating scrutiny, suspicion, and hostility from neighbors. Chul-soo's primal urges flare in self-defense and in defense of Sun-yi.

Amid rising danger, Sun-yi chooses to protect the boy she has come to love. She leaves him behind with a vow to return, whispering, 'Wait for me. I'll come back for you.' The vow becomes a thread that links the two eras.

Back in the present, Sun-yi enters a shed and finds Chul-soo waiting, still as young as years ago. He hands her the note she wrote long ago and reads aloud a book she once asked him to read. The moment ties the past to the present in a quiet, intimate ritual.

Sun-yi wakes from a shared sleep to discover Chul-soo is no longer beside her, but the moment remains as a living echo of the vow. The encounter reinforces how love and memory can travel across decades. The bond continues to shape their futures in subtle ways.

With the dawn, Sun-yi and Eun-joo depart after learning of a county call about the property. She chooses not to sell, signaling that memory and place preserve identity. The decision keeps the old home as a testament to what remained and endured.

Chul-soo stands at the road's edge, a silent sentinel as the two leave. The ending image shows him building a snowman, a small, hopeful act that crystallizes the film's themes of preservation and tenderness. The final note suggests a future shaped by patience rather than fear.