Spider Forest

A psycho-thriller from Korean writer-director Song Il-gon that's more style than substance but reasonably unnerving nonetheless, Spider Forest is a murder mystery in which a TV producer, now seeing a co-worker after losing his dancer-wife in a plane crash, discovers his dead boss—stay with me on this one—and his girlfriend, brutalized and dying, in an isolated forest cabin. Chasing the apparent perpetrator, the producer is struck by a car and suffers a serious head injury, but later awakens from a coma and drifts in and out of consciousness while being questioned by a policeman trying to unravel what actually happened—a quest that draws them into a half-forgotten incident from years before involving two young schoolchildren and bizarre occurrences in the forest. The filmmaker deliberately couches the story in convoluted terms, not only using shadow and darkness to obscure what's happening onscreen but employing flashbacks, inserts, and other technical tricks to keep viewers off-balance. While Spider Forest thus demands close attention, the big revelation at the end turns out to be disappointingly obvious. Still, the film's forbidding atmosphere has its own rewards, and while this isn't one of the best entries in Tartan's “Asia Extreme” line, it's still worth a look. A strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD extras include a “making-of” featurette, deleted scenes, interviews with three of the stars, and a photo gallery, as well as trailers for other Tartan releases. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a memorable if flawed chiller.] (F. Swietek)