Spider Forest (2004) User Reviews

Psychological Thriller With Witty Structure

[max4movie · 7/10 · 14 December 2017]

Geomi sup (international title: "Spider Forest") excels in introducing the viewer to a world, in which everything is uncertain and up for discussion. Structurally and thematically the movie creates a rich atmosphere, with its creative and witty use of storytelling, and with its unreliable narrator. It falters somewhat in easing viewers into this otherworldly experience - making several plot twists rather predictable. Ultimately, it succeeds in transferring a dreamlike, surreal psychological fugue to a series of episodes, that must be rearranged, interpreted, and completed by the viewer.

Overall 7/10 Full review on movie-discourse.blogspot.de

Nothing Special

[Splattii · 6/10 · 14 September 2004]

Well...what can I say about this film. I guess my initial thought was to mention a few movies that share a similar story or plot, but upon doing so I'd ruin the film. I just think that the concept although no tired yet, is getting a bit more common. I can count three to four titles I've seen in the last two years that use this concept to a certain degree within the storyline. This film is nothing new or original at all, and that in itself was a bit disappointing.

Let's put it this was. Within the first 15 minutes both my friend and I pretty much figured out was what going to happen. Why? There is a French horror film that came out (produced by a Korean studio also) that is close to identical to this film, except the main character is a woman. If you're interested message me and I'll pass the title along.

That being said, the story itself was still above average, but the execution was a bit poor in my opinion. I think the movie was just a bit too long for what it was trying to do (I think it was only 2 hours, but it felt like 3-4). The movie could have had the same impact if they cut off about 30 minutes. I keep thinking I missed something, or there was something more to this film...however there aren't any questions for me to ask...so I can't see how I could have missed something.

I saw this at the Toronto Film Festival, and I can't say that I was upset I saw it. I think it's worth a rental, but I wouldn't suggest anyone go out of their way to find this. It really had some potential, but again it just didn't execute in the areas it should have. Upon leaving the theatre all I was thinking was "I've seen this before...and I liked the other films a little more"

Not bad...but nothing to write home over.

One man's dream

[bruising_stars · 5/10 · 4 May 2005]

The director of this film was present at the screening I attended and provided the quote; reproduced from distant memory; which I have used as my summary, as a suggestion for understanding the film. While he seemed generally intelligent and charming I must agree with the comments of user Splatti but also feel compelled to add that this film features an alarming sexual dichotomy, in that the characters who are 'bad' have noisy and 'weird' sex and the characters who are 'good' manage to have perfectly clean and wonderfully fulfilling sex. While this is perhaps common in mainstream films, there is something, perhaps the explicit nature (although not high) of the portrayal, that makes it stand out. This overshadows all other elements of the film.

Terrific slow-paced drama

[Rocco3000 · 8/10 · 28 July 2005]

This is a very good film about a man trying to find and understand himself after the devastating loss of his wife in a plane crash. The answers to all his questions and secrets lie within the Spider Forest. So no, don't go into this movie thinking that it is a horror film with spiders running around killing people. There are a couple of "tense" moments" but, unlike American films, these are not done gratuitously, and are there to serve as points of development for the characters and do not deter the tempo of this film from being a deep character study of one man's self discovery. Great acting by all aboard is only strengthened by a solid script and talented director. This film reminded me a lot of a Japanese film called the Uninvited. So if you liked that one, you can't miss Spider Forest.

Uniquely haunting and intricate

[dr_fritz_von_norstrom · 8/10 · 12 September 2004]

I saw Spider Forest at the Toronto International Film Festival last night. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure of what to expect from it - was it a horror film? Or was it a detective story, a thriller, or something altogether different? The answer, I think, is that it is all of those things.

The film begins with a series of mysterious and shocking events in a cabin in the forest, and much like a spider's web, returns to this place quite often in an attempt to unravel its secrets.

Spider Forest manages to avoid most of the modern horror/suspense/thriller conventions, including scary pale children and does not rely on special effects to set the mood. Instead, the psychological predicament of the main character creates an atmosphere of blurred confusion and distrust of one's own memory.

The story is entirely unique and never quite goes in the direction the audience is expecting.

I give a confident recommendation to see this film.

I liked it, I certainly don't know why

[cbranje · 13 September 2004]

I also scoped this movie out at the Toronto Festival (Sept 14th). They showed it at the ROM theatre which has the unfortunately acoustic property of being directly over a subway.

I liked this movie a lot, more for its style than anything else. The tunnel scene has some of the coolest lighting I've seen in a while. The plot was a bit hard to follow and I did leave the theatre scratching my head a bit. I didn't know what to expect at all, so it took me a while to get with the flow. I'd like to see this film again to get a better handle on the story.

I definitely recommend this film for fans of visual, stylistic film making.

South Korean Psychological Thriller.

[ilikepickles · 3/10 · 11 November 2010]

This film loses itself in its' own artistic complexity. While I was awed by the lavish photography and impressed with the strong acting performances, I found the plot hard to follow and full of holes. It seemed to me that the film makers wanted to "blow our mind," when, in fact, all they succeeded in doing was confusing and bewildering us. I was left with more questions than answers at the end, which would be fine if it were an art film, but a psychological thriller shouldn't drag you through two hours of "what the hell" just to leave you there. I hope I see more from this director, but possibly with a better team of writers.

Cyclic Interpretations

[pmdawn · 8/10 · 11 November 2008]

"Spider Forest" is a South Korean movie which would be better classified as a psychological thriller, in my opinion. Some would say it's a drama. Others would argue that it's really a horror movie, depending on your interpretation.

And that's what this movie is about: Interpretation. Much like David Lynch's puzzle movies, this one is all about what's real or not, and it's up to you to decide what's happening.

Two things I can say about it - it's that the movie has a cyclical nature, and that there's no real closure on screen. The ending can be interpreted as hopeful or depressingly frustrating, or anything else entirely. It's up to the viewer to decide.

So, While "Spider Forest" has many elements borrowed from other movies ("Mullholland Dr", "The I Inside", and to a lesser extent "Memento" and even "Lost" in the forest scenes), they are done well here, and help make a quality movie that poses a lot of questions, answers them all only to have you wondering what really happened in the end.

If you like this kind of movie (I know I do), get inside the Spider Forest...

8/10

I got bit!!!

[gojira69 · 1/10 · 4 April 2007]

I want to believe all new horror films coming out of Japan these days are edgy and make for enjoyable watching.

Spider Forest is neither.

It is seldom that I finish watching something and end up teed off for the waste of time, but Spider Forest was an exception in this regard. I was very teed off. The makers of the film succeeded on one level; throughout the film I could not stop because I wanted to see the answer to the mystery spun by the storyline. I could not stop watching. That's why I was so angry when the film finished... they dragged me all the way through 2 hours of tedium for this POC? WARNING: Spider Forest is another one of those Japanese "ghost" stories, though you don't realize that going in.

I never want to see a Japanese ghost story again. They're phony and contrived. "It's a ghost story" has become like a big rug under which to sweep any and all unresolvable plot holes you have in your story-telling.

Toronto film festival - 2nd screening

[kyliep · 8/10 · 14 September 2004]

Before seeing Spider Forest last night at the Toronto International Film Festival (agree with comments by cbranje, the ROM theatre is not the best at masking outside sounds, though the occasional rumble of the subway did add an extra shot of tension to some of the more suspenseful scenes), I'd heard it described as a film for those who liked 'Mulholland Drive' but found it too linear. While I don't think it's a very accurate statement, the film does invite comparisons to David Lynch. The creepy tone, gruesome murder scene, elliptical narrative structure, and ambiguous plot resolution are all Lynchian trademarks but I think Spider Forest is a little more straightforward or at least it lends itself more readily to a range of interpretations.

The set up: a man wakes in the forest, discovers the mutilated corpses of coworkers in a house in a forest, and pursues a man he believes to be the killer. Though most of the ensuing story is told in what may be hazy, and possibly wholly fictitious, recollections of the past, each memory recreates a moment of truth that one could easily see as happening to this man. We see him mourn the loss of his wife then hear other stories about death and loss and wonder, are these manifestation's of one event or separate incidents that actually occurred.

The film poses epistemological questions like: How do we know that we know? What differentiates consciousness from sleep? Is what we consider reality merely our continual reconstruction of our past experiences? For me, figuring out what's happened to the main character in 'Spider Forest' is akin to piecing together the fragments of a bizarre dream, but with the pleasure of seeing these fragments unfold in a series of beautifully shot frames.

Definitely recommend.

Excellent

[sain11 · 9/10 · 27 May 2005]

Spider Forest is one of those films that not everyone is going to like, but I for one thought it was excellent. Unfortunately it is difficult to describe the plot more than it already has been in other comments as knowing too much about this film will spoil it's magic.

This is a dark, intricate, intelligent, atmospheric and somewhat spiritual movie in my opinion. Certainly worth seeing for anyone who likes to walk out of a cinema with questions floating around their heads.

Great performances, characters, cinematography, direction, and one of the most interesting scripts I have seen in a while. This has probably been billed as some kind of horror or thriller genre film, but to me it is more human drama or art-house film. Korea is becoming the best place to find films that weave intricate human stories into other genres of film to elevate the stories above the competition.

Spider Forest is definitely a great piece of cinema that will make you think and will stay with you well after the credits roll.

Modern folklore, partly East European Style, Korean situation

[nkw88 · 8/10 · 9 September 2005]

As Kurosawa adapted Shakespeare into Japanese Samurai films, Song did European folklore, or maybe Kafka, into modern Korea. For me, European folklore is a story that boys and girls are lost in labyrinthine woods - Hanzel and Gretel or Red Riding Hood. A TV producer, Kang Min, lost his way in woods and his time, his memory, his unconsciousness messed up and mixed. In this chaotic situation, Kang Min meets a mysterious woman (Suh Jeong) who tells the legend of Spider Forrest.

Director Song emphasizes the tone, mood, and atmosphere rather than coherent storytelling. Especially the lighting of tunnel scene reminds me Krzystof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronica and Decalogue.

Very unique film.

Spider Forest

[Scarecrow-88 · 8/10 · 27 April 2007]

A TV station manager and female reporter under his employ are found brutally murdered in a cabin within Spider Forest. Someone at the scene of the crime(Woo-seong Kam)may have all the answers. Unfortunately, he walks in front of a moving vehicle which causes a major gash on the side of his head(a powerful image shows a puddle of trickling blood pattern from underneath his face)inside a tunnel and loses memory. During the duration of the film, he'll have to piece together everything that occurred during that time revolving around the murders. This outline is as easy as it gets because this is one very elusive, complex film which will probably take multiple viewings to fully become aware of how the Spider Forest controls the story's unfolding.

In true Lynchian form, there are probably MANY different opinions to the film. Who's the voice telling our protagonist to see his lover's rendezvous with his boss(the very boss who gave him one last story, on a "haunted forest" before looking for employment elsewhere)in the Spider Forest? Who is the man, cloaked in darkness who knocks out protagonist over the head after the knowledge of a horrible crime?

We have a scene where a spider bites our protagonist who later becomes feverish and needs assistance from a young, mysterious woman named Min Su-in(Jung Suh)who was his voice in an article regarding the "haunted forest" for which he was assigned in the first place. The spiders within the "haunted forest", according to Min, aren't your ordinary garden-variety spiders. She tells our protagonist a story or two. Both have great importance to him for we understand that he is reliving these memories(or reliving a jumbling of thoughts and fantasies where we're never quite sure which were actually lived or envisioned)bit by bit unfolding what occurred to the two slain victims. One is that spirits live within the Spider forest..forgotten spirits loved by no one. These spirits exist in our world. The legend is that if nobody loved the deceased spirit it becomes a spider and is trapped in the forest forever. SOOOO, the spider that left the fever and mark on our protagonist..was it a spirit? Min also tells him about a little girl and boy and the affair and murder they witness.

A key piece to the conversation regarding the spider-turned spirits that interested me greatly was Min mentions that they don't know that they are dead because "all their memories disappear." If anyone remembers them..their spirits are set free.

Now, if you're scratching your head at what I just wrote imagine the feeling many viewers have had sitting through it. So many questions and so many interpretations. As detective Choi(Hyeong-seong Jang)searches for the truth working from the information our protagonist gives him, things don't always add up. Min Su-in, for instance, isn't alive at all, but died as a little girl. The story of the little girl and the little boy becomes apparent as Choi finds a certain teacher who informs him about Min Su-in and her tragic death through illness, just like the little girl in the story told to our protagonist. Our protagonist's identity will be revealed to Choi and things SLIGHTLY add up.

The one true element I believe that is a constant no matter what other unorthodox things are introduced to us..the protagonist's wife died in a plane crash and two people were brutally slain. The other things within the mind-bending plot structure seem to always hearken back to one or the other. Specifically, our protagonist and what part he had that tragic night in Spider Forest. The use of ambiguity.."what's not right with this picture & what really happened?"is really well used here because we are sent through the ringer with the protagonist who experiences bizarre memories that seem very real..but are they created within a confused mind?

Beautifully written, beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and bewildering.

[sitenoise · 9/10 · 15 March 2008]

I had to watch this film once, visit IMDb and read all I could from other folks attempting to explain it, then watch it again before arriving at a score of nine. The first viewing left me bewildered. The Spider Forest is a place where the souls of those who die alone or unloved live in limbo as spiders until someone remembers them. That's a kinda cool premise. The Spider Forest is also the cobwebbed memories each of us navigate as we attempt to deal with trauma, guilt, shame, etc. Maybe.

This is one of those Korean films which could not exist or be told in linear narrative. There are shots and scenes that come out of nowhere and seem not to touch anything around them until much later in the movie. This can be very frustrating. So why watch it again? As one can imagine, these out-of-nowhere scenes look completely different after you've been to the end once. All the nuances of the very simple story blossom the second time through.

The film is beautifully shot and the acting top notch. SPOILER ALERT !! Jung Suh, from GREEN CHAIR and the ISLE is beautiful and captivating in a very understated performance in dual roles, which, by the way, is a huge spoiler (notice this info is absent from the credits) that doesn't spoil a thing.

This film is incredibly complex without being obtuse. It is more of a journey than a story. I will be watching it many more times.

Lost 14 days...what does it mean?(spoiler^^;)

[eaveta · 23 October 2004]

I will say just one thing.(spoiler, i think) From the traffic accident to the last scene that he woke up in the hospital, for 14 days, we have seen everything happens in the film through his unconsciousness.

In fact, he fell into a trance after the accident.

and then, at the end of film, he come out of the trance realizing what he did.

Spider forest means his unconsciousness.

it is the secret of this film.

It's one of the best!

[Waltham · 8/10 · 19 March 2005]

Yeah... really! I liked this one. Maybe cause it was shot not in that usual Asian style with many 'kung fu' scenes and usual for temporary korean cinema brutality... I've bought this movie on DVD in Korea as "horror" but I wasn't disappointed by the delusion of a salesman. Mysteries of human memory are much more entertaining, than various histories about vampires or phantoms (english name "Spider Forest" leads us on similar allusions, doesn't it?) Despite on some lacks in the screenplay and some affectation of several characters (unfortunately Ilgon Song could not overcome a temptation to include a brutal policeman in his action), this movie is a real success of this talented director.

What "Tale of Two Sisters" desperately *wanted* and utterly failed to be: Brilliant

[ggulcher · 8/10 · 31 January 2006]

I'm sitting here trying to think of what to say about this movie and what I'm getting is a stream of adjectives... Bewildering; brutal; heart-wrenching; astonishing; baffling; mind-bending; ingenious; perplexing; poetic...

And that's weird because when I'd finished watching (about an hour ago,) I wasn't sure if what I'd seen was something I loved or hated. Thankfully, with the vital clue given by user Eaveta (don't read her post unless you want a significant hint,) and some serious thought, I was able to unravel enough of the confusion, clear away some of the, er, cobwebs, and discard the latter option. A truly remarkable story and unexpected gem of a psychological mystery-thriller. This rental is good for the rest of the week and I will definitely be diving into a big, tasty second helping.

There are a dozen utterly perplexing paradoxes in this story, the most significant of which involves the intentional confusion of the protagonist's character with that of another, creating an inescapable time-loop - which left me shaking my head and talking aloud to the screen like a lunatic. Another such paradox involving a different major character had me pausing the movie to ponder the implications of it all. It soon became evident that these complex twists and turns were to be regular occurrences, but unlike...well, another recent Korean thriller, in "Spider Forest" the wrenching, mind-blowing plot twists had a definite, calculated, and most importantly, *logical* purpose: To weave an intricate puzzle around one solid, definite final truth whose eventual revelation unfolds with the elegance and dramatic impact of a symphony. Remember how the UFO tune "Love to Love" ends? That heady, stratospheric crescendo that finally - and abruptly - crashes to Earth with a finality that leaves you physically shaken? The ending of "Spider Forest" is a lot like that (the word "phenomenal" springs immediately to mind here.)

The mood is as relentless an emotional edge as that of Mickey Roarke's "Prayer for the Dying"; the photography is dark and atmospheric without being either contrived or openly depressing; the acting is great all around - Kang's firing scene alone is one of the most quietly horrific of the film; the supernatural tinges are understated enough to allow the film to be classified as a completely non-supernatural mystery, yet serve to tie the story threads together comfortably and seamlessly - something that would likely have been botched in the hands of a lesser writer/director.

The real star of the show is of course the story itself. It's a brilliant, circular thing that reminds me of Pink Floyd's "Wall" or maybe just that circular, intertwined knot on the cover of King Crimson's classic "Discipline." As it progresses you're kept in a constant state of agitation - that gnawing feeling that there's something vital you've missed (and in fact you will have,) something you can a-l-l-l-most get a handle on but not quite - just as the next tidbit of knowledge passes before you then quickly away, before you can get a grasp of *it*. The overall effect is to leave you in something of a daze - not of disgust at a puzzle that's insoluble by design (like... another recent Korean thriller,) but rather the healthy agitation of grappling with a worthy challenge to your intellect.

That, folks, is great storytelling.

AN INTRICATE WEB OF SUPSENCE- A LABYRINTH OF PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

[pbtyagi · 8/10 · 24 May 2020]

I'm still trying to get my head around this neo-noir psychological Korean thriller. Throughout its intricate web of suspense, it keeps you on the edge and leaves you fervently searching for the answers at the end. It would be a disappointment for those who are not fond of this genre.

Its plot is a labyrinth of past, present, and future as the protagonist encountered a ghastly crime in the opening scene and lead us to an entangled ride of unshrounding the mystery while confronting with his lost memories, phantasmagorical dreams, obscurity, and bogeys of past. He remains elusive of reality for the most part of the movie. The story is a telling tale of one's struggle with his past grief and inability to overcome it.

Korean movies are humdinger of mind-twisted plot that challenges one's sagacity and forces viewers to concentrate. Spider Forest is no different. Though the ingenuity of its non-linear plot can not be doubted, it has some missing links which should have not been left unfixed. Much is left to the imagination of viewers. One has to re-watch it again to join the missing link left by an abstruse narrative.

Yet another example how "foreign" (i.e. non-American) horror films get overrated - just because they're foreign.

[fedor8 · 10 December 2019]

A bulk of IMDb's users are American. This explains entirely why American horror films are far more underrated than non-American ones, hence why "foreign" films on IMDb get much higher averages. Or perhaps it's because they're better? Hell no. Most Oriental horror films are just as generic as their Western counterparts, the vast bulk of Italian i.e. Gallo films are awful hack-jobs, most French horror films are more stylish but very flawed too. A typical non-American horror film has a rating of over 6, whereas a typical American horror film gets around 5 stars or less. The reason for this is simple: Americans have a sort of quasi-inferiority complex when it comes to cinema - at least among cinephiles this is true. Film buffs tend to get way too easily impressed by subtitles and incomprehensible languages. The snobs and hipsters that they often are, these so-called film buffs assume that - for example - a European movie has to be intellectual by default. "Ah, a European film! Must be intelligent." This is why IMDb's averages can only mean something when you compare movies within the same genre and from the same country. Don't ever make the mistake of comparing the averages of an American and a non-American (horror) movie. That leads to confusion and false expectations.

Anyway...

"Spider Island" - or "Gemini Soup" as it's called in its original - is like yet another David Lynch con-job in the Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive manner, in the sense that a complex mystery is set up but there is not even a half-way logical resolution, no real attempt to explain anything, just very vague "hints" that don't tie in with anything coherently.

Worse yet, the director clumsily makes bad transitions from back story to present to fantasy, and the three get so entangled, to the extent where it's impossible to tell which is which or when a shift from one to the other even takes place. The icing on the confusion cake comes with the three female leads, all of which are virtually indistinguishable from one another; name tags would have helped (like at McDonald's), because watching these virtual triplets alternately interact with the male lead - confounded by the awful time-transitions and clumsy editing - ensured that I had no clue what the hell is going on half the time.

When was he married? Was the office affair after that? Is he a ghost? If he's a ghost why can he talk with the cops? How come cops couldn't use DNA analysis to connect him to the murder? Why did the photo shop girl lie to him when she told him the spider forest story? Very sloppy writing too, not just directing.

A bland visual style, so typical of most Oriental films, doesn't exactly enhance the entertainment factor which is brought to a minimum what with the puzzling plot and the awfully slow pace; two hours is a stretch for this kind of low-grade nonsense.

The actresses are very cute though, as usual, and that certainly helps.

Amnesiac...

[azathothpwiggins · 28 September 2020]

SPIDER FOREST is a fantastic, multi-faceted ghost story. In fact, there's so much going on that multiple viewings are -cheerfully!- recommended. The twists come in rapid-fire succession, building a layered story of loss, betrayal, deception, murder, and the beyond. If you're longing for an intelligent supernatural tale with heavy doses of mystery and suspense, then this movie will fill your need! There's even a non-linear, dreamlike quality! More horror bliss from South Korea!...