Whatever you do, don’t hire a nanny. It’s a message that comes up again and again in movies about the destructive force that can be unleashed when you bring a stranger into your house, in films like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, or William Friedkin’s schlocky The Guardian. One of the landmarks of Korean cinema hits on the same territory: Ki-young Kim’s 1960 film, The Housemaid, which addressed the pains of upward middle-class mobility via the story of a family that hires a young woman they can barely afford to help them cook, clean, and watch their kids. She then seduces the father, gets pregnant, causes the death of one of the family’s children, and basically reduces the entire household to a broken heap of destruction and sorrow.

Fifty years later, writer/director Sang-soo Im has decided this is material that bears a modern reevaluation. And the choices he makes are as fascinating in what they are attempting to say about contemporary Korean culture as the original was in its day. (Whether the film itself is as fascinating may be another story.) Sang-soo, instead of setting things within a middle-class household, casts the family as the aspirational endpoint of the 1960 family’s ambition: they’re ridiculously, ostentatiously rich.

The father, Hoon, has an unspecified occupation that, combined with the family money from his wife Hae-ra, allows them a palacial estate. They already have one housemaid, Mrs. Cho, who mostly handles cooking and cleaning, and runs the place with militaristic precision. With the lady of the house pregnant with twins, they task Mrs. Cho with hiring a nanny to help with the childcare of the impending babies and their existing daughter. She finds Eun-yi, a shy young woman, to fill the position.