Spider Forest

Song Il-Gon
2004

I never quite understood the rationale behind the whole "k-horror" phenomenon. Being birthed from a waning cycle of Japanese fright flicks it seems that the whole idea is to cash in on a trend that's already passed. This isn't a knock on the movement in general, or any particular film, it just seems counterintuitive to good business. Anyways, Song Il-Gon's psychological freakout is a ghost story, detective mystery, and time traveling riddle all at once. While it doesn't do any of these genres particularly well the film itself is technically very pleasant with a careful, measured aesthetic, good performances, and a pretentious, but achieved gravitas. The twisty paradoxical story involves a jaded documentarian who stumbles on the murder of his boss and coworker while on assignment in a rural area. He is bashed in the head by his colleagues' assailant and lands in a hospital with serious injuries. With little concern for his recovery the now murder-suspect returns to the forest in an attempt to unravel the mystery. Song's creative weaving of narrative and time, an undertaking that often comes off as a cop-out in other films, is admirably elegant here, allowing the director to get away with certain concessions that seem like obvious twists and cliched ghost-story tropes. Inevitably some of the symbols and tricks are corny, but the film remains a good advertisement for how a good director and DP can craft something worthwhile from a weak script.