Bong Joon Ho Introduces Ally: A Deep-Sea Dream of Stardom and Survival

There is something deceptively light about the premise of Ally, the first animated feature from Bong Joon Ho. A piglet squid—small, translucent, almost toy-like—dreams not merely of survival, but of visibility. She wants to see the sun. She wants to become the subject of a wildlife documentary. She wants, in essence, to be seen.

Yet nothing in Bong’s body of work has ever been simply light. From Parasite to The Host, his cinema has consistently revealed how fragile innocence becomes once it brushes against systems of power, intrusion, and consequence. With Ally, that collision appears poised to unfold not on land, but in the depths of the South Pacific Ocean—a setting as visually expansive as it is narratively charged.

idea

At the midst of the film is a creature that feels invented, but isn’t. The piglet squid (Helicocranchia pfefferi) exists in the deep ocean, its rounded body and soft features giving it an almost cartoonish charm. It is the kind of organism that seems designed for animation, yet Bong’s decision to foreground it does something more deliberate.

The piglet squid is not just cute—it is obscure. It lives in darkness, far from the surface, far from human attention. By making such a creature the protagonist, Bong reframes the very idea of centrality. The film does not begin with dominance or spectacle; it begins with marginality.

This echoes a recurring gesture in Bong’s work: the repositioning of perspective. Whether examining class hierarchies or ecological imbalance, his films often ask what happens when the overlooked becomes the narrative axis. In Ally, that question is submerged—literally—but no less urgent.

flow

Ally’s dream is specific, almost disarmingly so: she wants to become the star of a wildlife documentary. It is a meta-desire, one that folds the act of looking into the narrative itself. The subject wants to become the object of observation.

This is not simply ambition; it is a commentary on visibility. Who gets seen? Who remains hidden? And what does it mean to be “discovered” by systems that often extract rather than understand?

In a filmmaker’s hands like Bong’s, this premise suggests a layered exploration of spectatorship. The ocean becomes not just a setting, but a screen—one that reflects back the human impulse to document, categorize, and ultimately control.

plot

The narrative pivot arrives with the sinking of a mysterious aircraft. It is a disruption that feels both sudden and inevitable. In Bong’s cinema, catastrophe is rarely random; it is the visible symptom of invisible systems.

The aircraft’s descent into the ocean transforms Ally’s world from a space of quiet dreaming into one of urgency and danger. The deep sea—already an environment of pressure and darkness—becomes charged with external intrusion.

This moment recalls the tonal shifts of The Host, where a creature emerges from polluted waters, or Okja, where corporate intervention reshapes the natural world. In each case, the boundary between human and non-human realms collapses, revealing a shared vulnerability.

In Ally, that collapse appears to occur underwater, suggesting a narrative that moves not only upward—from depth to surface—but outward, toward confrontation.

emotive

Ally does not undertake her journey alone. The announcement hints at a cast of “colorful and loyal—yet unlikely—companions.” This phrasing is familiar, almost archetypal, yet in Bong’s work, ensembles are rarely straightforward.

His characters often operate in tension with one another, bound by circumstance rather than harmony. If Ally follows this pattern, its companions will likely reflect a spectrum of perspectives—each shaped by their position within the ocean’s ecosystem.

The idea of loyalty itself may be tested. In environments defined by scarcity and survival, alliances are fragile. What begins as companionship can shift under pressure, revealing deeper currents of fear, desire, and self-preservation.

style

The journey at the heart of Ally is explicitly vertical. It moves from the uncharted depths of the South Pacific to the sunlit surface—a trajectory that carries both physical and symbolic weight.

The deep ocean represents obscurity, pressure, and the unknown. The surface, by contrast, suggests exposure, light, and recognition. To move between these spaces is to traverse not just distance, but condition.

For Ally, reaching the surface is not merely a geographic goal; it is an existential transformation. It is the fulfillment of her dream—and potentially its undoing. Visibility, in Bong’s world, is never neutral. To be seen is to be subject to interpretation, to categorization, to use.

The film’s tension may well lie in this paradox: the very thing Ally desires could alter the conditions that made her who she is.

animation

That Ally marks Bong’s first foray into animation is significant, but it should not be mistaken for a departure. Rather, it appears to be an expansion of his existing concerns into a medium that allows for greater formal freedom.

Animation enables the rendering of environments that defy physical logic—the fluidity of water, the luminosity of bioluminescent life, the shifting scales of underwater space. It also allows for a heightened emotional register, where color and movement can operate as narrative forces.

Yet Bong’s sensibility is unlikely to be softened by the medium. If anything, animation may intensify his ability to juxtapose beauty with unease. The ocean, rendered in vivid color and motion, becomes a site where wonder and threat coexist.

collide

The screenplay, co-written with Jason Yu—known for his work on Sleep—suggests a collab dynamic that bridges generational and stylistic approaches within Korean cinema.

Yu’s sensibility, often grounded in psychological tension and domestic unease, may complement Bong’s broader socio-political lens. Together, they are likely to craft a narrative that balances intimacy with scale, character with system.

The film’s long development timeline, beginning in 2019, indicates a project shaped by iteration and intention. This is not a reactive work; it is one that has evolved alongside shifting cultural and environmental conversations.

amb

The South Pacific setting is not incidental. It situates the film within a vast, largely uncharted environment—one that resists easy mapping or control. The ocean, in this context, becomes a mirror for human limitation.

It reflects our incomplete knowledge, our tendency to project meaning onto what we do not fully understand. In Ally, this mirror may be turned back toward the audience, asking not just what we see, but how we see.

The wildlife documentary that Ally dreams of joining becomes a meta-device. It represents a mode of looking that is both revelatory and reductive—capable of bringing attention, but also of simplifying complexity.

fin

Even in its early reveal, Ally feels less like a departure and more like a continuation—an extension of Bong Joon Ho’s enduring inquiry into systems, visibility, and the fragile balance between worlds.

The piglet squid, with her quiet dream of stardom, becomes an unlikely conduit for these themes. She is small, soft, and seemingly insignificant. Yet within her story lies the potential to reframe how we think about attention, about aspiration, about the cost of being seen.

As anticipation builds, Ally positions itself not merely as an animated feature, but as a cinematic experiment—one that uses the language of animation to explore questions that have long defined Bong’s work.

If his previous films have taught us anything, it is that beneath the surface—whether of society or the ocean—there are currents we have yet to fully understand. Ally invites us to dive into them, to follow a creature who dares to look upward, and to consider what it means to emerge into the light.