Fantastic film! Loved how unconventional it was overall, like everything I expected to happen happened in just about the opposite way. The scene in the Ferris wheel cart was cinematic storytelling at its finest, I absolutely loved the integrated seamless flashbacks and the up-close shots of the bloody, missing teeth, it was all so seamless and the acting was superb. I felt like I had to throw everything I knew about detective thrillers out the window. Kim Hye-ja's performance is about as perfect as you can get; I feel like the film sets her up this over-bearing, maybe even slightly crazed figure towards her son but then it smartly and slyly dials her back and makes her extremely sympathetic while still being a driven and passionate mother who believes her son can do no wrong. Early on, one of the detectives mentions CSI, and it really got me thinking about how cut-and-dry & predictable those detective shows ultimately are. An episode of CSI easily sets up the junk collector as the real killer, everybody goes home happy, the end, but Mother confidently throws out red herring after red herring, thrilling detective beats, deliciously peeling off the woven strands of its seemingly complicated web before arriving at the conclusion we all should've known from the start: that the simplest answer tends to be the correct one. I think it's what I ultimately love about Bong Joon-ho films: he intersperses these seemingly grand tales of murder and betrayal with light, delicate touches of comedy, horror, gore, even some slight fantasy that only serve to further expose the messiness and mundanity of realistic, everyday life. It's the grey area, with no good, no evil, just being alive and playing the hand you're dealt, either learning to live with it or escape into ignorant bliss.