“Revelations,” the new thriller from the director of “Train to Busan” and “Peninsula,” has no zombies. But this collision of crime and punishment, Christianity and psychology is as suspenseful and satisfying as any thriller to come our way this year.

Writer-director Yeon Sang-ho — the AI thriller “Jung_E” was also his — immerses us in a single crime, perhaps committed by a notorious ex-con, in the psychology of trauma and the psychosis of people who believe they’re seeing “signs” that tell them what “God wants me to do.”

Tf we learn nothing else from this slow-moving, big twists ticking clock tale, it’ll be the psychological definitions of Apophenia and Pareidolia and how they apply to the connection between madness and “belief.”

A young girl is missing, and we’ve seen her possible abductor stalk her to her church on a rainy day. That’s how Pastor Min Chan (Ryu Jun-yeol) catches the creepy, haunted gaze of Kwon Yang-rae (Shin Min-jae). Let’s sign him up to our tiny start-up congregation!

But the stalker is also being stalked. Violent Crimes Unit Det. Yeon-hee (Shin Hyeon-bin) seems just as haunted, and not just by Kwon. She pops pills to deal with her anxieties. It takes a while for us to notice there’s another young woman just over her shoulder, just behind this door or in the next bathroom stall. That’s her sister. That’s why she’s taking those pills. Her death is what haunts the detective and her ongoing obsession with Kwon Yang-rae.

The distracted but devout pastor has a lot on his mind. There’s a new mega church being built in this underserved corner of the city. It’s being constructed by his mentor/pastor, and Min-chan knows this corner of Christianity is quite “corporate.” He might be up for a promotion, or Pastor Jung could simply assign the new facility to his son.

It’s not exactly the best time to hear from that private eye Min-chan hired to follow his wife that there’s conclusive proof that she (Moon Joo-yeon) is cheating.

Our pastor looks for “signs” of “what God wants” because “God’s will must be done.”

Flashbacks showing Yeon-hee at Kwon Yang-rae’s earlier trial reveal that the convicted rapist/kidnapper/”monster” was tormented by supernatural quasi-Christian visions (his mother was fanatically-religious) that directed him, visions created by childhood trauma.

Our detective is also seeking “revelations,” clues about what’s to come, where the missing girl is, what her quarry might have had to do with it and what her dead sister wants her to do about that.

Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Kyu-seok’s script takes us down the rabbit hole of interconnected lives and extreme responses that spin out of when those lives collide. All will be tested and all will snap, to some degree.

But will anybody pull it together in time to save the missing girl?

Ryu (“A Taxi Driver”) has the most bizarre character arc to play, a man whose faith is tested from all sides who stumbles and falls as he faces those tests, growing more fanatical as he does.

Shin Hyeon-bin must show us a cop observant and canny enough to earn her new promotion, but a daughter whose father worries about her because of the weepy guilt she carries over a dead sibling.

Shin Min-jae gives some interesting shades to the guy set up to look like a killer — scars, dead-eyed stares, the works.

And Kim Do-yung brings a conflicted gravitas to his characeter, a psychologist who tried to understand our traumatized criminal when he was on trial and weathers sincere, strident “This is all YOUR fault” accusations because he has a role to play in this fresh case as he defines (for the viewer, mostly) what everybody involved seems to be suffering from.

Yeon immerses us in this world and this case with all its psychological and supernatural subtexts. Crucifixes are everywhere — neon ones in or on churches, heavenly visions of crosses or Jesus in the day or night sky. That ghostly sister shadows our pill-popping cop and our suspect acts more and more suspicious.

It may be obvious at times and far-fetched at others. But these “Revelations” played for me, and drew me in. Yeon Sang-ho has conjured up a tale whose twists trip us up often enough to make its fraught payoff satisfying.

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Hyeon-bin,
Moon Joo-yeon, Kim Do-yung and Shin Min-jae

Credits: Directed by Yeon Sang-ho, scripted by Choi Kyu-seok. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:03