AllMovie

Like Mulholland Drive, Song Il-Gon's angst-ridden Spider Forest gets a lot of mileage out of the director's flair for off-kilter visuals and creepy atmosphere. The uneasy tone of the film, enhanced by a couple of horrific images in the early going (a splattered bloody murder scene and a ferociously violent car accident), will hold viewers' interest while the story doubles back on itself, seeming to twist in all directions, obscuring as much as it reveals. This is true from the very opening of the film, which is cannily shot and edited so that it's sometimes hard to tell from whose point of view we are watching the events unfold. While the major plot twist in the film will be immediately obvious to fans of this type of mind-bending cinema, Song manages to draw the audience in on an emotional level, with help from Gam Woo-seong's powerful portrayal of grief and guilt. The film is slow-moving and occasionally frustrating in its weblike narrative (at one point there is an extended flashback within an extended flashback, and there's always a nagging doubt as to whether any of the stories being relayed have a genuine basis in the film's reality), but Song's visuals remain compelling, whether it's a rack focus shot of a spider dangling in Kang's face, foreshadowing disaster; or the repeated image, in a slow tracking shot, of a strange door leaning against a tree on the edge of a forest. When the disturbing moments come, Song delivers them with a shockingly blunt effectiveness, including a mind-searing scene of one piggish character defiling a woman while devouring an apple. Spider Forest doesn't offer the closure one might desire, but it sends us on a twisted journey that lingers in the memory.