BEDEVILLED New Auteurs

Jang Cheol-soo’s debut film is a work of genre-bending feminist horror that explores the moment when a victim of savagery herself becomes the savage. When a comely young bank employee from Seoul witnesses an attempted murder, she decides to take a vacation to the rustic island where she summered as a child. Her refuge turns into a nightmare when she discovers that her girlhood friend Bok-nam is regularly subjected to unspeakable acts by the brutish local men and treated as a slave by the elderly women. A tragically botched escape attempt drives Bok-nam over the edge and, with sickle in hand, she strikes out for vengeance: no one will be safe. Partly inspired by true stories of sexual assault in Korea, Jong’s gruesome film demands no small commitment from its audience; in return it gives us a damning indictment of domestic violence and those who do nothing to stop it.