Lee Jung-eun, Gong Hyo-jin, Park So-dam and Lee Yeon play a family on a mission of vengeance in 'The Journey to Gyeongju' From left: Actors Gong Hyo-jin, Lee Jung-eun, director Kim Mi-jo, and actors Lee Yeon and Park So-dam pose at a press conference for "The Journey to Gyeongju" at Lotte Cinema Konkuk University in Seoul on Monday. (Yonhap) Korean cinema has been handing women the keys. Last year's "Project Y" sent Han So-hee and Jeon Jong-seo scheming through Gangnam's underbelly, while "The Woman in the White Car" dropped Jung Ryeo-won and Lee Jung-eun into a snowbound whodunnit stacked with reveals.Pick a recent female-fronted release and odds are the women onscreen are the ones doing the dirty work themselves rather than playing the victim, in high-octane fare tuned to diminished attention spans."The Journey to Gyeongju," opening Aug. 26, is a harder film to pin down. The setup is grim: Eight years after her youngest daughter was murdered on a school trip, a mother loads her three grown daughters into a van headed for Gyeongju, the ancient capital that happens to share the girl's name, her killer stashed in the trunk. But the pitch, by all accounts, is less slow-burn revenge thriller and more dark-comedy road movie, with the family's messy, halting grief never far from the surface. That oddball mix is the sell.Director Kim Mi-jo and her four leads discussed the film Monday at a press conference at Lotte Cinema's Konkuk University branch in Seoul. Kim, whose debut "Gull" won the grand prize in Jeonju's Korean competition in 2020, is making her first commercial feature; it has already picked up an audience award at the Florence Korea Film Festival and an invitation to the Hawaii International Film Festival.The premise, it turns out, traces back to the director's own childhood. "I'm actually the youngest of four daughters," Kim said. "On a trip to Gyeongju, the city felt completely different by day and by night, and that double face seemed right for the irony of a family vacation that's also a murder trip." The title carries a double meaning, she added: Gyeongju is both the city and the dead girl's name, while "gihaeng," the Korean word for a travelogue, is also a homonym for bizarre behavior — covering both the itinerary and the errand.Lee Jung-eun, the unforgettable housekeeper from "Parasite," tops the bill as Ok-sil, a mother stuck in place since the day her daughter died. "Ok-sil lives like she's locked in a cell, not even noticing time pass," Lee said. "It's a fierce kind of love. She and her daughters throw everything into the revenge." She signed on first, having met Kim when the director worked as script supervisor on "Hommage" (2022), then waited a year for the rest of the family to assemble. Lee Jung-eun stars in "The Journey to Gyeongju" (Lotte Entertainment) Gong Hyo-jin, K-drama's reigning rom-com queen, plays dutiful eldest Jang-ju, and revealed she turned down the film once. "The script was so much fun, but the schedule clashed, so I passed," she said. "It stayed with me. I kept asking my agency how the casting was going, and when the offer came back around six or eight months later, it worked out." She promised an ending that stays ahead of the audience: "Whatever you're imagining, this movie will be different."Park So-dam, another "Parasite" alum, plays Young-ju, the family's law-school-trained brain. The actor brought a backstory of her own: Diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2021, she leaned on Lee through the hiatus that followed. "I couldn't tell my real family how sick I was, but I told her everything," Park said. "She'd show up at my door at dawn just to listen. Meeting her again as mother and daughter made me happy on its own."Lee Yeon completes the lineup as Dong-ju, a former wrestler who leaps before she shoots. "The script mixed tragedy and comedy so well, and with these actors on board, there was nothing to think over," she saidWhatever label sticks, the director seemed to know what she wanted the film to leave behind. "It's about the people left behind, how they fracture and come to understand each other through loss," she said. "In the end, it's a story about fierce love.""The Journey to Gyeongju" opens in Korean theaters Aug. 26.