Cheap Spider Forest (DVD) (Song Il-gon) Price

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Customer Reviews of Spider Forest

The need to be remembered, and forgiven
In a dark forest at night, A TV producer, Kang Min, sees two murdered people, one very gruesomely, and starts to chase the alleged murderer, who then knocks him unconscious. Staggering down a tunnel, he is struck by a car. He is taken to a hospital and is operated on, suffering from severe brain trauma. He regains consciousness two weeks later, and speaks of returning to the Spider Forest before falling unconscious. He leaves the hospital, with an old man giving him a blue key as a clue. <
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>A detective and friend, Choi Sung-Hyun, tries to piece together the case. Sure enough, he finds the bodies the cabin, the two being Kang-Min's girlfriend, Hwang So-Young, and his boss, Choi Jong-pil. The shot of Choi's bloody corpse, riddled with cobwebs, spiders in his mouth and eyes is pretty grisly. But Sung-Hyun's boss is quick to name Kang Min as the obvious suspect, the perpetrator in a crime of passion. Then why not bury the bodies if he's guilty, wonders Choi? <
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>Told through a series of flashbacks, it turns out Kang Min's life has been on the decline since the death of his beloved wife Eun-ah in a plane crash. The brief scenes with her, when she does a mime of Adam and Eve to cheer up Kang shows her to be bubbly and expressive, as are the scenes of her holding the ice cream cones at the airport. If Korea has an Audrey Hepburn, it is the actress portraying Eun-ah. <
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>Kang has since become involved with an aspiring reporter at his station, Hwang So-Young, but he seems not to care about life anymore. He edits parts of a program while the first half is on the air, something which in the eyes of his boss, Choi Jong-pil, is not professional. "Broadcasting is a promise to our viewers." Choi is a bit of a jerk, and quite competitive. "If the sword is too short, you lunge. If things are tough, double your efforts." Yet he is quite accurate about Kang's attitude. "Losers are not those who fail in life, but those without any will to live." While having his way with Hwang, who's clearly not enjoying it, he tells her life is war while so ravenously eating an apple, so that pieces of it falls on her back. Sloppy eater! <
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>Kang Min also tells Sung-Hyun of Min Su-In, a photoshop owner near the forest. This woman is pretty, soft-spoken, and kind, but melancholy. She had called him regarding a ghost story he could possibly use for his documentary. The story involves an elementary school boy who befriended a girl who was teased by other kids. However, after the two witnessed her mother having an affair, the father chased after them. The girl's body was never found, so she was presumably killed, but her spirit was said to haunt the forest. Actress Jung-Suh's role as the compassionate Min Su-In really lifts this film. <
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>Min Su-In tells Kang Min, "There is a legend. If nobody loves the spirit of the deceased, that spirit becomes a spider and gets trapped forever in the forest. But spider-turned spirits don't know that they're dead because all their memories disappear." And that is a key clue to what is going on and to understand the film. <
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>Kang Min himself finds it difficult to piece together what has happened. Who was the murderer? And who was the anonymous person who not only gave him photo negatives of Choi Jong-pil and Hwang having their tryst, but told him about the forest? And who is Min Su-in? <
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>Much of the film may serve to confuse the viewer, something I've observed as a debit from some viewers, but that merely reflects Kang Min's muddled state of mind. It's a ghost story and mystery-thriller in one, with some imagery reflecting the presence of spirits. It took me a few views to get what presumably actually happened, and when I did, I came out really appreciating it. And the elegiac score sets a tone of regret, sadness, and a need to be forgiven. Please, Hollywood, don't remake this film or else..... <
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Very good Korean mystery.
Spider Forest (Il-gon Song, 2004) <
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>Not a bad little movie, this, a Korean mystery that dabbles in the horror and spiritual genres, exploring the concept of redemption in nihilistically amusing fashion in the course of playing out a tidy little murder mystery. <
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>Kang Min (Woo-seong Kam) wakes up one night in the spider forest with no memory. Wandering through the woods, he comes upon a cabin and lets himself in, looking for assistance. Inside, he finds a grisly murder scene. He stumbles away and walks back towards town, but is involved in a motor vehicle accident on the way that almost kills him. While he's in a coma, the police find the murder scene, and he, of course, becomes the prime suspect. Kang Min has to clear his name and, with the help of his friend Seong-hyeon Choi (Hyeong-seong Jang), figure out who it was who actually committed the murders. Meanwhile, his memory begins to come back, and so we get a decent portion of the final three-quarters of the movie told in flashback, as we see the events leading up to his presence in the forest, as well as an explanation of some of the legends surrounding the spider forest, which, of course, will ultimately impact on the story. <
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>The whole thing is quite nicely done; the characters are well-drawn and believable, the mystery doesn't stray off into needless complexity, and the whole thing is darkly beautiful. For a while, it seems as if the climax is going to wander off into the realm of the cheesy (remember what I said about redemption?), but stick with it--Song still has a surprise or two up his sleeve. I was summarily impressed; give this one a try. You won't regret it. *** ½

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Don't listen to...
the reviewer who said it was brilliant compared to A Tale Of Two Sisters... comparing the two films is like comparing The Beatles White Album to Peter Gabriel's So album. They're completely different!