Moss

When he learns of his father’s death, Hae-guk (Park Hae-il, War of the Arrows) travels to pay his respects even if he wasn’t very close to the man when he was alive. From the minute he enters his father’s remote village, Hae-guk starts getting the feeling the people who knew his father better than he did don’t want to talk about what happened or what the man was like when he was alive. Truth be told, they don’t really want the son there to begin with, but Hae-guk is a stubborn young man who is determined to find out why people are acting so weird and what happened to his dad. Directed by Kang Woo-suk (Public Enemy), the mystery of Moss unfolds at a leisurely, almost annoyingly slow pace, or it does for at least for the first hour or so. The interaction between Hae-guk and the villagers, especially the Chief (Jung Jae-young, The Divine Weapon) is stilted and formal to the point of frustration, so it’s important not to try and outguess the plot as it slowly paces itself out. There’s a method to Kang’s hypnotic pacing; like the slow crawl to the top of the rails on a roller coaster, he’s setting you up for a wild thrill ride in the film’s final 90 minutes that doesn’t disappoint.