What to know | Five Netflix thriller choices for October: Doctor X, Animals, Below, The Eyes and Acid

Among the topics on Netflix in the first half of October, thrillers take several forms. The Korean public film list is classified by different regions, films and series, listing works such as Doctor X, Animals, Below, The Eyes and Acid. They each come from different rankings and cannot be directly combined into the top five in the global rankings, nor does it mean that they are all released in the same week.

Cover image: Netflix

Doctor X, putting conflict into the hospital power structure

In the Korean Doctor X: Age of the White Mafia, Kim Ji-won plays surgeon Gye Su-jeong, whose surgical skill intersects with power struggles inside a hospital. Lee Jung-eun and Son Hyun-joo also star. The series adapts the Japanese Doctor X franchise, while using its own Korean characters and story.

If you like how characters make choices within the system, this type of medical drama provides more than just a single surgical incident. The pull between roles, management and interests will continue to affect subsequent conflicts. It is suitable for those who are willing to follow the changes in relationships in multiple episodes.

Animals, kidnapping ties family to public image

Animals, directed and performed by Ben Affleck, begins with the kidnapping of the son of Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball. Kerry Washington plays his wife Abigail, and Gillian Anderson and Steven Yeun also participate in the performance. Family crises overlap with political identity, making every decision involve both personal relationships and external image.

Compared with feature-length TV series, movies focus the pressure on a more limited period of time, and the focus of viewing is more likely to fall on negotiations, information gaps, and the characters’ immediate reactions. When choosing a film, you can first think about whether you want to see how the incident is resolved or what the characters will reveal under pressure.

Below, the seaside town encounters unknown creatures

Below stars Josh Hartnett as Calvin Penney. The story is set in a fishing town in Newfoundland. An unknown threat appears in the sea and gradually affects residents and families. Actors such as Charlie Heaton and Mackenzie Davis participated, giving the monster theme a background of local life and interpersonal relationships.

Netflix official introductionPositions it as a marine life thriller story. People who like closed communities, unknown environments and episode-by-episode revelations can judge whether it is suitable for them. It may provide a different rhythm than a monster movie that is purely based on chases.

The Eyes and Acid, one traces loss, the other faces disaster

In the Korean movie The Eyes (눈동자), starring Shin Min-ah and others, photographer Seo-jin traces clues to the death of twin sister Seo-in while her vision gradually changes. The entrance to viewing is how perception and information become unreliable, rather than a literal translation of the film's title into the yet-to-be-confirmed official name of Taiwan.

The French movie Acid uses corrosive rain to force the young girl Selma and her parents to find a way to escape. Family relationships advance alongside environmental catastrophe, providing another source of oppression to previous works that centered on hospitals, politics or investigations.

When choosing a movie, you can first choose the conflict you want to watch: system, kidnapping, monster, investigation or disaster, and then decide whether you want to invest in a series or watch the movie in one night. The actual movie titles and watchable regions are still based on your own Netflix page. The popular rankings provide clues at that time and cannot be regarded as the same rankings in different places every day.