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 he most entertaining thing about "Acacia" isn't
the movie itself, which is mostly dull, plodding, and not very scary even though
it's billed as a horror film. It's also not the movie's Big Reveal, which is so
obvious that when all the secrets are revealed, only the most dense viewer will
be shocked. The only thing worth noting is that the filmmakers have come up with
the most number of Pan-and-Reveal Moments in recent memory. Such a moment
involves the camera slowly panning to reveal someone appearing out of nowhere in
the background. When I say that "Acacia" is stuffed with
Pan-and-Reveals, I don't exaggerate.
"Acacia" stars Hye-jin Shim and Jin-geun Kim as a
married couple unable to conceive a child. The husband is a doctor and the wife
spends her time judging student art and knitting. Things change when the couple
adopts six-year-old Jin-seong (Oh-bin Mun), a quiet boy obsessed with drawing
pictures of an acacia tree that he believes is the reincarnation of his dead
mother. The family goes through some rough patches, but eventually a semblance
of happiness is achieved. That is, until Mi-sook becomes pregnant, setting off a
chain of events that ends disastrously when, one rainy night, Jin-seong goes
missing.
Although "Acacia" is billed as a horror film, I'm
not sure if it qualifies. There's very little actual supernatural things going
on, even if director Ki-Hyung Park ("Whispering
Corridors") keeps inserting breathing sounds whenever we see the acacia
tree, in the couple's backyard, in close-up. Then again, I'm not entirely sure
if cutting to the tree every other minute qualifies as mood. Oh sure, the tree
looks foreboding in its dying and decrepit state, but instead of thinking,
"Wow, that tree sure is spooky," I kept thinking, "Man, why
doesn't someone chop that tree down? It's an eyesore."
As a South Korean horror film, "Acacia's" cast is
appropriate. Mind you, I don't think the acting is exceptional, just that one
gets used to seeing characters in South Korean horror films moving about as
little as possible and acting generally very passive, exuding little overt
emotion until it's time to shriek in horror. And no, it's not subtlety, it's
just listless acting. In a funny scene that relates to this point, Mi-sook's
mother comments to her daughter, in the aftermath of Jin-seong's disappearance,
that Mi-sook "looks better". To which I have to ask: How can she tell?
Actress Hye-jin Shim has a permanent dour look on her face from opening scene to
the closing credit!
There's also the role of Do-il's father, who seems to exist
for the sake of adding to the movie's very limited bodycount. The father dies by
way of CGI ants, including one ant that, having burrowed its way into the old
man's eye, literally pops its way back out. Good stuff. The rest of the
film consists of Shock Flashes, where characters dream of/envision supernatural
events that is all in their mind. Of course each of these Shock Flashes are
accompanied by loud shrieking music needed to wake the audience up in case they
fell asleep during all the ponderously uninteresting moments throughout the
film.
If dull storytelling, listless acting, and uninspired
narrative are not your cup of tea, "Acacia's" superb cinematography,
courtesy of Hyeon-je Oh (in his debut) is worth a look. The film goes through a
number of visual changes, offering the movie a variety of moods achieved through
creative tints and filters. The camerawork is also a big plus, flawlessly moving
between locations and scene transitions. In particular the film's Big Reveal,
which flashes back and forth in time, and doing it all with seamless efficiency.
"Acacia" is not entirely a bad film. It might
have worked as a drama/thriller, but not as a horror film. When all is said and
done, the film's supernatural elements come up moot because they can all be
explained as figments of various characters' imaginations. Unfortunately the Big
Reveal is painfully obvious, and there's just not enough here to sustain a
110-minute movie.
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