April 26, 2025
by Carla Hay

Directed by Hur Jin-ho
Culture Representation: Taking place in South Korea, the dramatic film “A Normal Family” (based on the 2009 book “The Dinner”) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Two affluent brothers and their wives have their parental obligations and morality tested when they find out that two of their children have secretly committed a heinous crime.
Culture Audience: “A Normal Family” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the movie is based, and intense dramas about power, privilege and crime.

Riveting and tension-filled, “A Normal Family” is a twisty drama that adds excellent cinematic layers to this superior adaptation of “The Dinner” book. The movie has absorbing performances in showing how family members react to their children’s crimes. There have been four separate movie adaptations of Herman Koch’s 2009 novel “The Dinner,” also known as its original Dutch title “Het Diner.” “A Normal Family” (the fourth movie adaptation of the book) is arguably the best movie version of the book so far.
Directed by Hur Jin-ho, “A Normal Family” was written by Park Eun-kyo and Park Joon-seok. The movie premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in South Korea in 2024. The previous movie adaptations of “The Dinner” had the same title as the book.
The first movie adaptation was a Dutch film directed by Menno Meyjes and released in 2013. The second movie adaptation was an Italian film directed by Ivano De Matteo and released in 2014. The third movie adaptation was an American film directed by Oren Moverman and released in 2017. In all three of these previous adaptations, the movies stuck to the original premise of making the movie focused on a long conversation between two couples during a dinner at an upscale restaurant.
“A Normal Family” admirably expands the world of the main characters by showing much more of their lives outside of a restaurant. The dinner conversations in “A Normal Family” are lynchpins to the story but do not get the most screen time because there are many other things that are shown in the movie that make the characters and their situations more complex. “A Normal Family’s” change to the story structure allows the characters to be more developed than in previous cinematic adaptations of “The Dinner” book.
“A Normal Family” begins by showing a road rage incident that turns into a tragedy. A man in his 20s named Hyung-cheol (played by Yoo Su-bin) gets into a confrontation with a man in his 30s (played by Yoo In-sun), whose last name is Yang, at an intersection on a busy street in an unnamed city in South Korea. The two men have a car collision and a very angry argument about who is at fault.
Mr. Yang, who is a professional baseball player, happens to have a baseball bat in his car. He stops the car, takes out the baseball bat and walks toward Hyung-cheol. Hyung-cheol’s response to so step on the accelerator and hit Mr. Yang head-on with the car. Mr. Yang dies almost immediately. He was in the car with his 8-year-old daughter Yang Na-rae, who is taken to a nearby hospital and goes into a coma.
This tragedy affects the lives of two very different middle-aged brothers in contrasting ways. Older brother Yang Jae-wan (played by Sul Kyung-gu) is a cunning and ruthless defense attorney, who is hired by Hyung-cheol’s wealthy father to defend Hyung-cheol, who could be charged with murder. Younger brother Yang Jae-gyu (played by Jang Dong-gun) is the hospital doctor who is supervising the medical care of Yang Na-rae. Jae-gyu is a compassionate doctor who makes people a priority over profits, sometimes to the detriment of his own career.
Na-rae’s distraught mother Seon Ju (played by Choi Ri) tells Jae-gyu that her deceased husband had the baseball bat in the car only because he was a professional baseball player, not because he used the bat as a weapon. She thinks that Hyung-cheol wrongly assumed that her husband was a thug. For now, Seon Ju is focused on her daughter recovering from the coma, but Seon Ju wants justice for her husband’s death.
Meanwhile, Jae-wan suggests to Hyung-cheol that his defense could be that Hyung-cheol thought Mr. Kang was going to kill Hyung-cheol with the bat, and Hyung-cheol “miscalculated” an attempt to swerve out of the way when Hyung-cheol hit Mr. Kang with the car. Jae-wan is fairly certain that the Kang family will accept a lucrative financial settlement from Hyung-cheol’s wealthy family in exchange for not pressing charges against Hyung-cheol.
Jae-wan also advises that the Kang family is more like to agree to an out-of-court settlement if Hyung-cheol makes a personal apology, but Hyung-cheol is reluctant to do that. Hyung-cheol says appearing apologetic in this case should be Jae-wan’s responsibility. The movie introduces this storyline about the road rage criminal case as a parallel comparison to what happens with the children of Jae-wan and Jae-gyu.
Jae-wan has two children, both daughters. His elder daughter is 17-year-old Hye-yoon (played by Hong Ye-ji), who was born from his marriage to his deceased first wife. Jae-wan’s second wife Ji-su (played by Claudia Kim) is about 20 years younger than Jae-wan. Ji-su has recently given birth to their baby daughter Sa-rang.
Hye-yoon is pretty and intelligent but also very spoiled, materialistic and selfish. It’s later revealed that Hye-yoon has applied to Cambridge University in England and is waiting to hear if she’s been accepted. The first time that Ji-su is seen in the movie, she’s exercising to lose weight that she gained from her pregnancy. It’s implied that she wants to stay thin because she knows she’s Jae-wan’s “trophy wife.” Clearly, this a household that places a lot importance on status and image.
Jae-gyu has one child with his older wife Lee Yeon-kyung (played by Kim Hee-ae), who has a brittle personality that masks deep insecurities. The couple’s 17-year-old son Yang Si-ho (played by Kim Jung-chul) has low self-esteem, partly because of his problems at school: He is often bullied by other students, and his academic grades are low enough where he could fail his last year in high school. The unnamed mother (played by Byun Joong-hee) of Jae-wan and Jae-gyu lives in Jae-gyu’s household, and she has dementia.
Jae-wan, Jae-gyu and their wives have a tradition of going on double dates at an upscale restaurant on a regular basis. Despite these family get-togethers, Jae-wan and Jae-gyu have had tensions in their brotherly relationship. Jae-wan thinks that it’s time for their mother to be put in a nursing home. Jae-gyu doesn’t like that idea, even though he admits that being a caregiver for a dementia patient has become overwhelming and stressful for the people in his household.
Jae-wan tells Jae-gyu that he found an ideal nursing home for their mother. The cost would be a $200,000 deposit and $6,000 a month. Jae-wan offers to pay only $1,000 of that $6,000 monthly cost. It’s an example of Jae-wan’s tendency to be inconsiderate. Jae-wan is also pretentious and often likes to show off his wealth.
There’s tension between the wives too. During one of the restaurant dinners, Yeon-kyung is very standoffish to Ji-su, who is trying to be friendly to Yeon-kyung. Yeon-kyung’s negative attitude toward Ji-su seems to be because Yeon-kyung is envious that Ji-su is younger and prettier than Yeon-kyung. When they are both in a ladies’ restroom, Ji-su tells Yeon-kyung that she would like them to be friends, but Yeon-kyung says no. Ji-su feels insulted and rejected, so for the rest of the evening, Ji-su makes not-so-subtle digs about Yeon-kyung being older, by calling Yeon-kyung “ma’am.”
Si-ho is being tutored by his cousin Hye-yoon to help Si-ho improve his academic grades. However, an early scene in the film shows that the two teens are also involved in some mischief. They have a secret social media account where Si-ho has uploaded a bootlegged “snuff” video of the road rage incident and the deadly results. Si-ho tells viewers he had to pay a lot of money to get the video, so they need to “like and subscribe.”
One night when the spouses are having dinner at a restaurant, Si-ho tags along on a date that Hye-yoon has with a slightly older teen named Jaeden (played by Park Sang Hoon), who is a student at the University of California at Los Angeles. The three teens go to a house party where there’s no adult supervision. Si-ho gives in to peer pressure to drink liquor, and he quickly gets drunk.
Si-ho then sees Hye-yoon and Jaeden making out at the party, while no one is paying attention to Si-ho. Feeling like a drunk outsider, Si-ho gets angry and storms out of the party. He ends up in a nearby alley where there are trash cans. He starts throwing things around and is soon joined by Hye-yoon, who followed him.
What happens in that alley takes a horrific turn, as the teenagers’ parents find out later. As already revealed the trailer for “A Normal Family,” Si-ho and Hye-yoon didn’t know that there was a surveillance camera that filmed what took place in the alley that night. Si-ho and Hye-yoon saw a homeless man in the alley and viciously kicked him and beat him up and then dragged him into a dark corner.
The homeless man is now in a coma at the same hospital where Jae-gyu works. And the surveillance video is all over the local news and has gone viral on the Internet. The faces of the two assailants are not clearly seen in the video. Yeon-kyung is the first of the parents to see the video and immediately sees that Si-ho is one of the attackers because she recognizes a shirt that he is wearing.
What happens during the rest of “A Normal Family” shows how the parents and the teenagers handle this troubling situation. The movie goes beyond a dinner conversation in one location by depicting how the weight of this crime affects the everyday lives of the people who know who committed the crime. Not everything is clear-cut and predictable. It’s enough to say that some people change their motives and opinions, while others do not.
“A Normal Family” has very good acting from all the principal cast members, with standout performances from the cast members who portray the parents. This movie does not pass judgment on decisions that certain people make. Instead, the entire movie is an effective observation about how definitions of loyalty and betrayal can differ, depending on the individuals and circumstances. It’s also a disturbing look at how far some people are willing to go to preserve a family name and reputation to fit the image of “a normal family.”
Room 8 Films released “A Normal Family” in select U.S. cinemas on April 25, 2025. The movie was released in South Korea on October 9, 2024.