“Do not throw away a mattress recklessly: you never know what might be born from it.” The urban ghost story director Park Syeyoung unfolds here is grotesque, horrible, beautiful and giddy. Mold starts growing on a dumped mattress and a mysterious creature is born from the mold. The creature wanders around Seoul, taking people’s vertebrae. Having displayed his peculiar view of the world and his sense as a visualist through his short films, Cahsbag (2019) and Luxury Staycation (2021), Park Syeyoung strengthens his signature features through The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra, allowing viewers to fall into his bizarre beauty. The stronger the mold’s vitality becomes, the stranger the film’s energy gets, and the horror of this captivates the viewer so they can’t look away. (JIN Myunghyun)