The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion

The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion follows Ja-yoon, a high school student living in the countryside with the elderly couple who took her in. She has no memory of her childhood, which followed an escape from a secret facility during a violent incident. When financial pressure and her adoptive mother's illness push the family to the brink, Ja-yoon enters a televised talent competition for its cash prize. Her appearance brings unwanted attention: a young man who claims to know her under another name, along with figures from her past who have been searching for her, upend her ordinary life and draw her toward the truth about what she is.

Park Hoon-jung wrote and directed the film, his fourth feature after New World, The Tiger and V.I.P., and the first entry in a series he continued with The Witch: Part 2. The Other One. Kim Da-mi leads as Ja-yoon, with Cho Min-soo, Park Hee-soon, Choi Woo-shik, Go Min-si and Choi Jung-woo among the cast. Made for about six million dollars, it took roughly twenty-four million worldwide.

Reception splits sharply by audience. On IMDb the rating sits at 5.8 from 169 votes, while on TMDB it reaches 7.9 from 800 votes, a notably warmer response from that audience. A film critics' rating of 8.7 from 18 reviews places critical opinion well above the IMDb figure and somewhat above the TMDB one.