Acacia (2003)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Fresh and Exciting

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

No serious spoilers, but some very minor ones."Acacia", a Korean contribution to the ever popular Asian horror wave, concerns a husband and wife who decide that they're getting on a bit and decide to adopt a child. The child, who has an usual obsession with the dead tree in the family's garden, eventually disappears when the couple eventually have a child of their own and the aforementioned tree seems to hold a grudge against the family itself.And that's about it. The film moves at a snails pace, clocking in at over 100 minutes with 80 minute material. It is essentially a thin family drama with a creepy tree, and there is very little in the way of scares, just shots of the tree with weird mumbling noises playing over the top. However, the idea of the tree being the child's mother is a pretty original one, but it isn't exactly exploited to its full potential. This sort of separates "Acacia" from much of the new wave it belongs to: films like Ju-On and Ring tend to do the opposite, and milk bland ideas until they are red in the face.The film does begin to get going towards the end; however the realisation of the child's fate and the parent's actions not only dampen the earlier curiosity of the story, but are revealed with such machine gun editing that it's difficult to take in all at once. The final sequence is undoubtedly creepy, however it feels like too little too late.Overall, the film does not feel too much like a Ring cash in, however with the "film renaissance" that Korea is currently going through, I couldn't help but feel this film could have been so much more.

Ever since i saw this movie I look for it in any VD stores. At first I thought the movie is boring but I focuses my attention to the story not on it's mood and even sounds. I was horrified about what happened to the kid, it was mysterious at first but as the story goes I soon find the movie great. Well, the only matter which confuses me is the genre of the movie. I got almost cried after the end so I do recommend that the movie is drama not horror. I really like the movie!!! Especially the kid!!!.... Hope I could have a VD of that movie because there is none available in the store in here and also a book or story book about it... I was shock about the comment of some people out there... I love the movie, hope the director will soon have another episode about that story....That's all..thanks.

I do believe this film is brilliant. I have just watched it on DVD and it really makes you think. Hollywood would do all the work for you but this film leaves you to dot the i's and cross the t's.The emotions you think you are seeing on screen mean something different when you have seen the whole film.This is a horror film in the sense it is about the horrible things people can do to each other. A boy is adopted, rejected, disappears.The UK DVD is interesting as watching the two extra features show some scenes left out which might have made the film easier to follow but would have made you think less hard! I am really trying so hard not to do a spoiler so I wont nor do I want to sound pretentious. But do see this on DVD, watch the mini features and then go back to the scenes which now have a new meaning. This film has had praise and also a lot of stick but I do think it is a real work of art.

Having just watched Acacia, I find that I have to agree with the negative reviews here. I like Asian, and Korean horror, and I had great expectations for this film. Man, was i disappointed. Watching this, I kept thinking "surely they just do this to catch me off guard later on", and for a while I expected something ingenious to happen. However, I slowly realised that the film really is that bad. It is the cheapest cash in into the Asian horror market I have seen so far. The basic story is perhaps not even that bad, but the way it is filmed it seems like the most laughable plot ever. The tree as a 'scary' device might be okay if used cleverly, but all the filmmaker does is giving us different shots of...yes, a tree, over and over again. He seems to hope that the tree will do all the work for him in terms of tension and build-up, but it just feels like what it is: shots of a tree. For goodness' sake!Slow build-ups can be very effective, and a film that presents the viewer with only few glimpses of what is wrong might deliver good scares, but not Acacia. Sure, we get a glimpse of a child on a tricycle disappearing around a corner, and, yet again, meaningful shots of the tree from above, or underneath, or the side, but these scenes are just not scary. They feel silly, especially because you realise that the director means them to be scary. They simply aren't. Apart from that I agree with some of the other reviewers, that the characters are ridiculous. In particular the one character's 'descent into madness' is laughable. However, what really breaks Acacia is the terrible editing. Its hard to see why scenes were cut together the way they are, but it's bad, and it kills any spark of interrest it might have had. It also makes me feel patronised, because I can see what they are trying to achieve with it, but I cannot believe that they think I would fall for such cheap ploys.There are lots of great Asian ghost films, and lots of bad ones, but this is by far the worst I have seen. They must have been going through the list of 'what to put into ghost movies', and ticked them all off, but in the end they forgot to add the actual movie.