Creepy kids and a tree...

Mi-sook(Hye-jin Shim) and Do il (Jin-geun Kim) decide to adopt a kid. They bring home Jin-seong (Oh-bin Mun), a creepy, quiet kid who likes to draw. Jin-seong has a definite "Damian" vibe. Well, minus the whole son of satan thing. The kid has an attachment to their barren acacia tree and spends most of his time with it (when he's not drawing creepy pictures, staring at his parents, or hanging out with the little girl next door who claims to be a vampire). Yeah, this is not the kid I would have picked to adopt.

The couple try to form a bond with Jin-seong and he starts to warm up to them (kind of). Then all hell breaks loose when the woman finds out she's pregnant. Now imagine a normal kids jealous reactions and multiply that on account of creepy Damian-like kid. Without giving anything away, things get nasty. Jin-Seong disappears and the couple fall apart. Meanwhile the tree blooms....

Yeah, I did not like this movie. The directing was good and they teased us with some good subjects, but I don't think they really delivered. It had very good drama potential with the family story and good horror with some of the nightmarish visions and evil kid. My main gripe would be the score and editing. I hated some of the transitions between the scenes. There would be a scene and it would fade to black and go on with the next scene. Kind of like a commercial break. The score hooked me at first, but then had a tendency to go over the top in some areas. Usually in a scene that would've been creepy, but ended up feeling goofy.

On the positive side, the acting was great. Oh-bin Mun went to some dark places and was very effective. The creepy pictures he drew were not just your basic "bloody" pictures that creepy kids normally draw in these movies. They were just creepy. This movie also didn't have any unnecessary "ghost girls" in it. It did have some sweet shots of the tree. (sometimes POV) One scene that I loved takes place after a pretty nasty incident of spousal abuse. The trees blossoms fill up and pour blood down the tree. Very effective.

Overall, I would say this is a rental. I really don't think I would watch this movie again. I had to make myself watch it for the screen shots. It didn't even move slow enough to be a good "sleepy time" movie. Maybe I need to get Inugami for that. =(

Favorite scenes:
~ Jin-Seong being intense
~ The tree raining blood
~ Jin-Seong alone with the infant (pretty dang creepy)
~ Red yarn everywhere!

Things I learned from Acacia:
1) Don't adopt the "quiet kid"
2) Don't leave creepy adopted kid alone with the new baby
3) Red yarn is a great decoration
4) Don't attempt to chop down a tree in the pouring rain

Most of this I already knew, (except for the yarn thing. That's new), but I had to come up with something.

Hawlee: "I saw this movie after watching a really good tearjerker. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed. Next day while I was telling Barb about it, and it didn't seem that bad. It sounded rather good, actually. I figured I shouldn't have watched it after the tearjerker. I was starting to feel bad about ranting about it so badly. Barb was interested, watched it, and I was glad to see she didn't like it either. It just sounds like a movie I would like, but something about it made me not like it. The funny thing is, while setting up Barb's review, and reading the summary again... I got that urge to watch it again. My mind was going "Oooo, this movie does sound good... surely it isn't as bad as we thought!" Luckily, I'm not going to fall for it. I refuse to watch it again!"

Acacia is available to buy at the following vendors: