The story is set against the humid, claustrophobic landscape of late-1980s rural South Korea, and the film uses that environment to heighten feelings of isolation, frustration, and mounting paranoia. Park, rough-edged and intuitive, relies on blunt force and theatrics; Cho is more methodical but inexperienced; Seo brings modern forensic ideas and skepticism. Their clashes—about technique, authority, and the limits of law—become as central to the film as the crimes themselves.