Following his 2023 feature debut Unlocked, which used a serial killer premise to explore our dependence on smartphones, writer-director Kim Tae-joon now turns his focus to the anxieties of modern apartment living in the new Netflix psychological thriller Wall to Wall. Known in Korean as 84 Square Meters, the film follows in the tradition of socially conscious hits like Squid Game and Parasite, offering a modern parable about the perils of class ambition that is both distinctly Korean and universally relatable.
The story centers on Noh Woo-sung (Kang Ha-neul), who leverages every asset he has to buy an apartment in Seoul’s notoriously competitive housing market, viewing it as a crucial step toward a stable, successful life. Three years later, he is miserable. Working two jobs just to keep up with his mortgage, Woo-sung’s mental and physical exhaustion is compounded by a persistent thumping sound coming through his walls. When his neighbors accuse him of being the source of the noise, he becomes determined to find the true culprit, a quest that unearths a shocking conspiracy.
The film’s premise is rooted in a significant issue in South Korea, where approximately 75% of the population lives in co-residential buildings. These apartments are often constructed with concrete-mixed walls less than 30 cm thick, which fail to muffle everyday sounds. According to the Korea JoongAng Daily, noise complaints filed with the state-run Center for Neighbors’ Relations surged from 8,795 in 2012 to 36,435 in 2023. The problem has become so pronounced that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport now requires new residential buildings to pass a sound qualification test before construction is approved.
This “republic of apartments” emerged in the 1960s as part of a rapid industrialization effort following the Korean War. “An apartment was not an attractive alternative to people in many countries. But in Korea the then-government pushed ahead with the housing models for the middle class as a symbol of modernization,” Professor Jung Heon-mok of The Academy of Korean Studies told The Korea Herald in 2021. Apartments introduced modern conveniences like stand-up kitchens and flush toilets, and their popularity was fueled by a societal desire for progress. Today, however, this dream is often a trap. A fifth of Korean households own 91% of the country’s private land, while many homeowners are “house poor”—a term for those whose income is almost entirely consumed by housing costs, preventing other forms of wealth-building. As Woo-sung’s manager notes early in the film, he is a prime example of this widespread economic precarity.
In Wall to Wall, the immediate source of the building’s unrest is Yeong Jin-ho (Seo Hyeon-woo), a disgruntled freelance journalist in Apartment 1501. He is seeking revenge against Jeon Eun-hwa (Yeom Hye-ran), a corrupt former prosecutor who used her influence to kill a story he was writing about the apartment complex’s poor construction. Now, Eun-hwa lives in the building’s luxurious penthouse. When Woo-sung initially complains about the noise, she bribes him with cash and a false sense of class solidarity. Her real motive is to keep property values stable, as she has been secretly buying up apartments with inside knowledge that a new commuter rail line will soon be built nearby.
Jin-ho’s plan is to create a video exposé revealing Eun-hwa’s corruption. He rigs the entire complex with surveillance equipment, casting Woo-sung as the tormented protagonist in his narrative, seeing him as “the epitome of pain suffered by today’s young people.” To achieve his goal, Jin-ho frames Woo-sung for the noise by planting a commercially available “revenge speaker” in his unit and pays the downstairs neighbors to falsely accuse Woo-sung of assault. The resulting police hold prevents Woo-sung from cashing in on a crypto scheme that would have solved his financial problems. Having already sold his apartment to fund the scheme, he is left with nothing.
After a failed suicide attempt, Woo-sung is stopped by Jin-ho, who reveals that Eun-hwa was the buyer who took advantage of his desperate sale. Woo-sung initially believes he has found an ally, but soon discovers Jin-ho’s control room, plastered with surveillance footage of every resident. After witnessing Jin-ho murder a neighbor, Woo-sung realizes he is a pawn in a much darker game. Cornered, he convinces the journalist to let him take an active role in the revenge plot.
The climax unfolds in Eun-hwa’s penthouse, where Jin-ho and Woo-sung confront her. In the bloody conflict that follows, Jin-ho kills Eun-hwa’s husband but is fatally stabbed in the process. Believing Jin-ho is dead, Eun-hwa turns on Woo-sung, her condescension boiling over: “You indecisive piece of sh-t. This is why people live in nice neighborhoods. This place is swarming with scum.” She mockingly reveals the location of a hidden ledger detailing her crimes before raising a golf club to kill him.
But Jin-ho, feigning death, rises and chokes Eun-hwa to death as Woo-sung watches, making no move to intervene. As Jin-ho bleeds out, he urges Woo-sung to take the ledger and expose the truth. “Stop telling me what to do, you motherf-ckers,” Woo-sung snarls. Rejecting both their corrupt worlds, he places the ledger and his own apartment deed in the oven, turns on the gas to a pre-cut line, and walks away. The penthouse explodes, incinerating all evidence of the crimes committed.
In the film’s closing scenes, Woo-sung recovers in a hospital and is taken home by his mother to the quiet, seaside village of Namhae. The tranquil, rural setting offers a space for rest, far from the city’s pressures. Yet, he ultimately chooses to return to his empty apartment in Seoul. As he stands in the silent room, he once again hears the familiar thumping from the walls and begins to laugh.
The ending leaves the viewer to ponder a difficult question: Is it better to pursue wealth and status within a modern, maddening system, or to accept a simpler, quieter life devoid of upward mobility? Before her death, Eun-hwa declared, “Noise between floors is a human problem. Why blame the building?” The film questions whether the conflicts of modern life are a product of a flawed system like capitalism or an inherent part of human nature. By having Woo-sung return to the apartment, Kim suggests a relentless, perhaps inescapable, ambition that keeps us striving for more, even at the cost of our sanity.
