Notes
My quick rating - 5.2/10. I spotted Mantis pop up at the end of September and finally got around to checking it out, mainly out of curiosity since it stars Yim Si-wan, who you’ll probably recognize from the second season of Squid Game. Here he plays the titular Mantis, an ace assassin who re-enters the contract killing game after a break, only to cross paths with his old trainee friend Jae-yi (Park Gyuyoung—also from Squid Game S2) and a retired legendary killer Dok-go (Jo Woo-jin, who’s been in Hard Hit and plenty of other Korean action flicks). Together, they form the shaky nucleus of a new murder-for-hire startup. Yes, really—think StartUp, but with headshots.
For a group of trained assassins, though, they act more like a group of moody teenagers trying to form a garage band. Maybe that’s intentional, but it drains a lot of the tension from what could have been a slick, cold-blooded thriller. The premise has promise—a rival company forms to challenge the monopoly of MK Entertainment, the reigning kings of contract killing—but instead of escalating into a brutal underworld war, it devolves into petty drama and pouting. Everyone hates everyone by the halfway mark, which I guess checks the “conflict” box, but not in a satisfying way.
The film’s connection to the Kill Boksoon universe is a fun easter egg for Netflix fans, but it doesn’t add much depth. In fact, you don’t need to have seen Kill Boksoon to follow this; if you have, you’ll probably just wish you were rewatching that instead. Mantis delivers some decent fight choreography—tight, well-framed, and mostly believable—but it never reaches the exhilarating highs of Korea’s best genre work. There’s no moment that made me sit forward and go, “Whoa.” It’s all serviceable, never special.
The biggest problem lies in the writing. These characters are meant to be emotionally complex killers grappling with loyalty, rivalry, and identity—but the script turns them into one-dimensional caricatures. The supposed “emotional tension” between Mantis and Jae-yi never evolves beyond a few frustrated glances and awkward silences. What could have been a layered, tragic bond becomes a shallow subplot, and the performances swing wildly between blank detachment and visible overacting to compensate for the thin material.
Stylistically, Mantis looks fine. It's sleek, modern, and clearly benefiting from the Netflix production budget, but underneath the polish, it’s hollow. It feels like someone took a potentially great adult thriller and retooled it for a teen audience. The love story is there, but there’s nothing behind it, no real weight or consequence. And when the big climax arrives, it lands with a thud. My reaction was basically, “That’s it?”—never what you want to feel as the credits roll.
Fun in stretches, sure. But in the end, Mantis is the definition of middle-of-the-road: entertaining enough to finish, forgettable the moment it ends. Slick on the outside, empty within. Like a blade with no edge.
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