Looking for work can be brutal, but in Park Chan-wook’s latest, it’s downright lethal. The South Korean auteur behind “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden” returns with “No Other Choice,” a pitch-black satire that imagines a job market where eliminating the competition is not just metaphorical.

Set to hit cinemas on January 15, the film adapts Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel “The Ax,“ telling the story of Lee Byung-hun’s character, a former office worker who loses his job and struggles to find another. Desperation mounts, and soon our beleaguered protagonist is weighing the merits of taking out his rivals one by one. It’s sharp, darkly funny, and very much in line with South Korea’s fascination with class war satire, an obsession that has produced global hits like “Parasite” and “Train to Busan.”

“No Other Choice” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it earned a nine-minute standing ovation, and critics haven’t stopped raving: the film currently sits at a flawless 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. But the acclaim is only part of the story. Even stripped of its festival accolades, Park’s latest still promises an unflinching, twisted look at the pressures crushing the middle class, and the lengths people might go to survive it.

If you thought job hunting was stressful before, Park Chan-wook makes it deadly, and undeniably entertaining.

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