Spider Forest (Korean DTS)
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Film: C+
The cycle of interesting, if not always successful, Korean
thrillers continues with Song Il-Jun’s Spider Forest (2004), a film with
aspirations to be Memento in some ways and an outright mystery film in
another. Though somewhat ambitious and
sincere in its attempt to tell the story of a man who has lost some of his
memory and is not certain if he is the killer of dead persons he has come upon
never quite takes off despite being as consistent as it can.
The problem is simply that the writer/director’s script
just goes on and on with interesting exposition, but never comes together to
justify its story, length, sex, violence or suspense, which is mixed at
best. There are some promising aspects
of the film, including the fact that it takes place in Korea, but that is oddly
not used to the best effect and the resulting production could have been shot
in Canada with no difference.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image was shot by
cinematographer Kim Chul-Ju and is competent, especially in not going for the
overly dark look, yet nothing here is very visually memorable either. The transfer compounds the problem, with
weak definition and detail throughout.
The sound is three variants on the Korean language soundtrack: Dolby
Digital 5.1, Dolby 2.0 and DTS 5.1.
Though the DTS is better than the Dolby versions, it is not by much in
this case. Extras include a trailer for
this film, several few others from Tartan, stills, cast interviews, behind the
scenes and deleted scenes that would have made no difference.
- Nicholas Sheffo
