DVD Review – Acacia
Spoiler-free!
Acacia (South Korea, 2003)
Acacia looks to be a ‘bad seed’ movie, where the evil adopted kid insinuates himself into a nice family and then proceeds to weak havoc. But in a clever inversion of the genre, the ‘bad seed’ has every right to be pissed, and the movie turns what appears to be a worn-out theme into a wrenching tragedy.
Mi-sook and Do-il are a lovely suburban couple who live in a nice house with Do-il’s widowed father. Do-il is a doctor, and Mi-sook a textiles artist. Their only problem is that they can’t have a kid. They decide to adopt; Mi-sook insists on adopting an older child, a six-year-old boy, based on his artwork- unsettling Edvard Munch-like drawings of faceless people. Jin-Sung is a quiet kid with a troubled past, who believes the spirit of his deceased birth mother lives in the dead acacia tree in the backyard. Mi-sook tries to draw him into the family, but she isn’t sure how, and in her attempts she makes some painful missteps. Jin-Sung gets along best with Do-il’s father, and makes friends with the little girl next door. But his relationship with his adoptive mother suffers when her incredible bitch of a mother visits and makes nasty comments about adopted children in general and Jin-Sung in particular, right in front of him.
Things get worse when Mi-sook unexpectedly becomes pregnant. Jin-Sung doesn’t think much of his new baby brother, which leads to more friction. One night, after a particularly vicious fight, he runs off into the rain and disappears. After the boy vanishes, the dead acacia tree suddenly begins to bloom. As the tree comes to life, the family falls apart. Fatal accidents start happening, all of them under the acacia tree. As the truth about what really happened to Jin-Sung comes to light, Mi-sook and Do-il spiral out of control and into violence and madness.
Acacia has a vaguely David Lynch feel, with the perfect suburban family and neighborhood that hides dark secrets. But Acacia lacks Lynch’s brand of delicious weirdness, settling instead into a dark psychological thriller with some supernatural aspects. The movie’s misdirection initially succeeds, but the scenes meant to show Jin-Sung’s ‘evilness’ are absurd (for example, in one scene he sees a loose thread and unravels Mi-sook’s latest tapestry, while she watches in paroxysms of horror- but anyone who has ever known a six-year-old boy can tell you they don’t have to be evil to do that). The viewer quickly realizes that the kid is the victim here.
Acacia is slickly made, with high production values. There are no truly scary scenes , but several disturbing ones: one memorable scene near the end shows the interior of the house draped with skeins of red yarn, like blood dripping down the walls.
The acting is solid. Hye-jin Shim is good as a woman who is trying- and failing- to learn to be a mom. Jin-geun Kim feels a little rehearsed; he isn’t quite believable as the husband/father whose behavior descends into fury and violence after Jin-Sung disappears, but he sure tries hard. As Jin-Sung, Oh-bin Mun just has to sit quietly and look unhappy. Most likeable is Na-yoon Jeong as the grandfather who seems to be the only person with a hope of understanding Jin-Sung.
Recommend-o-meter: Acacia is a slow-moving film with plenty of atmosphere that will keep you hooked, so long as you don’t mind being thoroughly disgusted by the way adults can treat children.
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