Imagine failing a single fingerprint scan on your phone — and from that moment on, no one believes you're really you. Reclusive novelist Moon-jae wakes up to find his name, his face, and his entire life have quietly been stolen. We dug into Netflix's late-summer thriller Mousetrap (들쥐) without spoiling a single twist.
Ever heard the Korean folktale about a field mouse that eats a person's discarded nail clippings and transforms into their exact double? That unsettling bedtime story has been reborn as a modern-day chase thriller set in 2026 Seoul — and it stars three actors you already trust: Ryu Jun-yeol, Sul Kyung-gu, and Lee Kyu-hyung, going head-to-head. Since dropping on August 28, the buzz hasn't slowed down. Here's why it's worth your watchlist.
📌 Quick Facts
| Release Date | August 28, 2026 — worldwide on Netflix |
| Episodes | 10 episodes, all released at once (full binge-ready) |
| Genre | Mystery chase thriller / identity thriller |
| Director | Kim Hong-sun (The Guest, Money Heist: Korea, Tannggeum) |
| Writer | Lee Jae-gon |
| Based on | The webtoon Mousetrap by Ludovico, inspired by the Korean folktale "The Mouse Who Ate the Nail Clippings" |
| Rating | TV-MA (Korean rating: 19+) |
The premise comes straight from folklore: a mouse eats a person's cast-off nail clippings and becomes a perfect copy of them — while the real person is cast out and disbelieved. Mousetrap keeps that primal fear intact but reframes it as a very modern nightmare: what do you do when your face, your fingerprints, and even the memories of the people closest to you all refuse to recognize you? Once that question is asked, the story doesn't let up.
Moon-jae, a novelist who's spent years in self-imposed isolation, is jolted out of his routine when a fingerprint scan on his banking app fails. He soon learns that a mysterious figure — known only as the "mousetrap" — has spent a long time meticulously stealing his identity: his name, his face, his fortune, his entire life. Determined to reclaim what's his, Moon-jae steps back into a world where even the people who once knew him no longer recognize him. He's joined, for very different reasons, by Noja, a loan shark trying to recover money he's owed, and Detective Sun-yong, who's chasing the truth behind the impostor. That's as far as we'll go — the rest is far more satisfying to discover yourself.
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Ryu Jun-yeol takes on a dual role, playing both Moon-jae and the impostor stalking him, and has said in interviews he tried to split ordinary human emotion "fairly" between the two characters — watching those subtle shifts between the two faces is half the fun. Sul Kyung-gu, meanwhile, has noted that Ryu's mix of a distinctive presence and an "ordinary" face made him the right fit for a story about very human, not superhuman, deception.
👀 Who do you think turns out to be the "real" one?
No spoilers here — drop your theory in the comments!
This review was written to be as spoiler-free as possible.
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