Killed My Wife (Anaereul Jukyessda)” is a guilty, sinking suspicion, a question and in the end an answer to a mystery, cryptically served-up in a solid genre thriller that keeps you guessing, thanks at least in part to a bit of cheating on the part of the filmmaker

Jung-ho is bitterly convinced that “love needs money,” an idea he uses to justify his depressing gambling habit. Money, he believes, is the reason his wife (the gentle Wang Ji-hye) threw him out of the house. When Jung-ho lost his white collar job, he didn’t have the courage to tell her he had been fired and was scrounging for work as day laborer. Little did he guess what job she was forced to find to survive, and even when he does find out, it doesn’t seem to make much of an impression.

Only a bunch of gangsters running a gambling and massage business are raking it in. Our hero has borrowed money from the evil Mrs. Kim (Seo Ji-young), a sneering boss lady who threatens to cut off his hand Kim Ki-duk style if he doesn’t pay up. Her sadistic gloating seems more at home in a comic strip than a film, but the bitter final reveal about her — again, satisfyingly realistic — comes like an unexpected slap in the face of genre conventions.