Fantastic Fest 2010

Director Jang Cheol-so and Producer Han Man Taeg Live in Attendance!

Jang Cheol-so got his start as an assistant director for famed South Korean filmmaker Ki-duk Kim on productions such as SAMARIA and SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING. In his feature debut BEDEVILLED, which deservedly premiered as a Critics Week selection at Cannes 2010, Jang Cheol-so takes a few queues from his mentor and delivers a brutal emotionally shattering film that mixes genres in a way that might be described as “art slaughterhouse.”

Hae-won Chung (Ji Sung-won) is a young woman with a bad attitude living in Seoul. Her life isn’t going so well. She works at a bank where customers beg for loans they can’t afford. The cops identify her as a murder witness, but she doesn’t want to cooperate with the investigation. What’s more, an old friend named Bok-nam (Seo Yeong-hee) keeps bugging her to visit Moo-do, a remote island where the pair spent their youth. After Hae-won is sent on an involuntary vacation, she gives in and visits Bok-nam. Initially, life on Moo-do island seems calm and uneventful. The backwards islanders spend their days farming potatoes, tending to bees, and chewing narcotic “bozo leaf.” It soon becomes apparent that Moo-do island is not a happy place.

BEDEVILLED is not a regular horror movie. It is not a standard thriller or drama, either. Like the works of Ki-duk Kim, BEDEVILLED seamlessly blends humor, drama, suspense, and horror into a unified whole. This kind of mixture is hard to pull off, but Jang Cheol-so handles the task with a deft touch. By integrating the best aspects of multiple genres, BEDEVILLED obtains a depth and potency that more singleminded films inevitably fail to reach. The story progresses at a steady pace, dropping little clues about the island’s ugly mysteries. Nothing is rushed. Then, the final act comes around. (Rodney Perkins)

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