Bedevilled Blu-ray Review
She is woman, hear her roar.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, October 5, 2012
Have you ever dreamed of getting away from it all so some remote island paradise that is sparsely inhabited and
where the cares of the world could melt away in the tropical sun? Whatever you do,
don't go to Moo-do the
island at the center of the disturbing 2010 South Korean film
Bedevilled. Ostensibly a more or less straight
ahead revenge film,
Bedevilled has a lot going on within that framework, including some of the most nonstop
and rampant misogyny caught on film in any country, Asian or Western. The film might be seen as an incipient call to
arms against abuse and even a certain kind of codependence (or at least tacit complicity), but it's also a desperate cry
of a soul who has been tormented for too long to do anything other than ultimately strike back as viciously and
hyperbolically as she can.
Bedevilled cheats a little by starting out with what one assumes will be the central
story (which in a way it is—more about that later), as we meet Hae-won (Seong-won Ji), a pretty and efficient loan
officer at a Seoul bank. Hae-won is having a bad day at work, to say the least. She's seen arguing with an hysterical
older woman whose loan has been denied and who is insisting Hae-won has told her would be approved. It's hard to
tell who's telling the truth here, something that instantly sets the viewer on edge: is Hae-won simply the victim of an
addle-pated elder's misunderstanding or has she indeed misled the old woman? When even Hae-won realizes the
interchange is getting out of hand, she bolts from the office, where it soon becomes apparent that she previously
witnessed an assault against a young woman (something that is seen in the film's opening credits sequence) and has
been called to the police station to identify the attackers. She's reticent to actually come out and name them in the line
up, which again raises questions about her character. She has a reason (she remembers one of them having worn a
ring), but she's
mostly certain anyway, so why is she not stepping up to the plate to help the girl who's been
assaulted? Hae-won tries to get out of the police station but is actually accosted by the young toughs who have been
accused of the assault. She manages to make it back to the office, where she is inadvertently locked in a bathroom
stall by someone wearing flip flops. When she manages to get herself out of
that predicament, she sees a co-
worker who had ended up approving the loan to the old woman, and of course she's wearing flip flops, so Hae-won
snaps, and slaps the shocked young woman. At that exact moment a custodial staff woman walks by wearing the
exact same flip flops—it's obvious
she's the culprit. Needless to say, Hae-won's superior "suggests" she needs
a little break and orders her to take a vacation.
And
that's when the "island paradise" of Moo-do comes in. Hae-won had grown up on this remote piece of sand,
rock and trees sticking up in the apparent middle of an oceanic nowhere, and she is eager to reunite with her childhood
friend Bok-nam (Yeong-hie Seo). It turns out there are very few residents left on Moo-do, all of them in various families
that are related in some way to Bok-nam herself, at least through marriage. (It should be noted that the "cast list" was in
Korean and IMDb is virtually no help, so I am unable to properly identify all of the actors playing various parts.) Both Bok-
nam's husband (Park Jeong-hak) and his brother (Bae Seong-woo) are incredibly abusive toward Bok-nam, and indeed one harrowing scene
portrays Bok-
nam's rape at the hands of her brother-in-law, a situation one gets the feeling is more or less normal. The two
obsessively chew the island's plant based narcotic which has been nicknamed "Bozo leaves" due to how it makes people
who ingest it act. Bok-nam's mother-in-law (Baek Soo-Ryeon) is another piece of work, a dismissive woman who actually takes Hae-won to
task for being "stupid" enough to come back to Moo-do to vacation, of all things. There are several other elderly women
who seem to be sisters (perhaps in spirit) to the mother-in-law, and there's also Bak-nam's adorable little girl.
Bedevilled will probably frustrate a lot of Western viewers who want their slicing and dicing to start early and continue often. The
first half or so of this two hour-plus outing is a very slow exercise in developing mood and character. While some of the violence against
Bok-nam is explicit, it pales in comparison to what comes in the second half of the film once a horrible chain of events lead to the unraveling
of Bok-nam's rather tenuous grip on emotional stability. The rest of the film plays more like a standard revenge fantasy, with lots of over the
top slashing, some of which is incredibly gruesome but which still will probably be greeted mostly by "hurrahs" (if an occasional gasp of
horror) by an audience already primed to see Bok-nam exact some measure of justice on everyone who has abused her for so long.
While the film may well succeed in ultimately satisfying horror fans' desires to see lots of blood splatter and even the occasional
decapitation, it's obvious that
Bedevilled has more on its mind than mere mayhem. This becomes clear in the closing moments of the
film, when Hae-won and Bok-nam are caught in a cat and mouse game and Bok-nam is taking Hae-won to task for not having been more
supportive. And then there's a brief coda where we see the changes the whole trauma has had on Hae-won, once again returning her to
the focal point of the film, after the central section's obvious concentration on Bok-nam. Director Chul-soo Jang is obviously attempting to
make some salient points about female empowerment, but also some cogent commentary about Korean culture and its treatment of women.
There's a dour, depressing quality to
Bedevilled, but then again watching the subjugation of any class, ethnicity or gender shouldn't
be an easy thing to watch.
Bedevilled Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Bedevilled is an extremely unsettling film, but it's also not exactly what some may think it is: a traditional slasher movie, or even a
tradition revenge fantasy. This is instead something a good deal deeper, a film that delves into the torment of two wounded women's souls as
they each find a different kind of catharsis. The two lead performances are riveting, for completely different reasons, and the film is notable in
that so much carnage takes place in such an apparently idyllic location. Western audiences should be prepared for some slow going in the first
hour or so, but once the characters and mood have been established, the rest of the film is a terrifying excursion through one woman's (quite
justifiable) madness. Some may find fault with the film's rather cartoonish portrayal of men, all of whom are boors (to say the very least), but
that also helps to establish the oppressive ambience that works so well throughout the experience. This isn't a film for everyone, to say the
least, but it does boast superior video and audio, and it comes
Recommended.
