The new CEO of Mirando, Lucy (Tilda Swinton), announces that her company has made a discovery that will rid the world of hunger: a super piglet that looks like a cross between a rhino and an elephant that we’re assured tastes really fucking good. 26 super piglets are distributed to farmers around the world to be cared for over the next decade. In 10 years, popular TV veterinarian Dr Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal) will judge them and declare one ‘the best.’
Cut to: 10 years later, Wilcox hikes up a remote Korean hillside to visit Okja, a prized super piglet raised by Mija (Seo-Hyun Ahn) and her father. Raised on love and freedom, Okja is objectively the best of the bunch, but that means this beloved pet must go to NYC 
to be paraded around by its parent corporation (to disguise the secret testing) – unless of course she’s kidnapped by the Animal Liberation Front headed by Jay (Paul Dano), “not a terrorist,” along the way. And the ALF is only the first group of people Mija will come across that want to control the fate of her large friend, Okja.
Co-written and directed by Snowpiercer’s Bong Joon Ho, you can bet he’s got some interesting thing to say about these events: GMOs, image-obsessed corporations, eco-terrorism. But he cleverly brings it back to one of the most basic relationships to remind us of what’s important: the one between a girl and her best friend, the family pet. Here in North America, not only can we not imagine eating dogs, we object to it morally. Here, we name our dogs, we sleep curled up beside them, we feed them table scraps from our fingers, we look into their sweet faces and tell them they’re good boys, very good boys. If we accorded all animals the respect we give our pets, it would change the food industry 
as we know it. This is the way Bong Joon Ho choose to frame Okja’s predicament.
Tonally, Okja is very different from Snowpiercer. If the score doesn’t alert you to its farcical nature, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s voice doesn’t do it, then the unconvincing CGI will likely push you in that very direction. But Bong Joon Ho’s skill as a director means that he juggles these switchbacks in tone very carefully, and Okja’s whimsy never fails. Yes, it’s a completely weird movie, one that can feel like a cartoon and a horror at the same time, that can make you laugh amid the darkest of scenes. I realize this movie won’t be for everyone, but I found it profoundly interesting. Tilda Swinton is excellent, and Gyllenhaal does something we’ve never seen from him before. But it’s Seo-Hyun Ahn who steals the show, her bond with Okja and her purity of heart that elevate this movie from fantasy to fable.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 
I hope I get to see this, love the weird.
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I really liked this. I think the fact that they didn’t have the best CGI kind of worked with how goofy the film was occasionally.
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Yes, it sort of felt like it was on purpose.
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I was wondering if I should try this. I think I’ll watch it this weekend.😊
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Will I cry buckets of tears, is my one question. 🙂
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Sounds like this isn’t my sort of thing. I get creeped out easily.
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It’s not creepy at all. May make you feel weird about eating pork tho…
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Aww snap, something else to watch on Netflix that I can’t wait to get immediately smacked with writers block on. I love my life right now.
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Haha, I know the feeling.
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I noticed this showing up on Netflix and was very intrigued. Sounds like it’s a goody… I’ll likely watch it this weekend!
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Really interesting premise and surprisingly effective tonal shifts between the nature/animal bond scenes and the corporate satire/meatpacking industry horror scenes. Ahn in particular was incredible like you said. Jake was bizarre but entertaining.
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It was a bizarre turn for him!
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It horrifies me to think about someone eating dog 😦 Thanks for the heads up on this one!
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I’ve been pretty curious about this movie. Thanks for reviewing it!
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Best words to describe the movie: “profoundly interesting”. Great post!
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It’t not entirely one-sided, and I liked that. It came at it from different angles and didn’t talk down to us.
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Ok so I got to see this and I wanted to come back and answer my own question. Not only did I cry, it was UGLY crying. That scene with the baby pig.. hooley dooley. Just thinking about it makes my eyes water.
But even with the ugly crying, I really loved this movie. 😉
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