The bulk of Acacia is not treated definitively as about the supernatural, but is an eerie psychological study with real drama & complexity & depth of emotion.
A young couple unable to have a child adopt a boy who is obsessed with a tree growing in the orphanage school yard, which he draws over & over again with precocious skill. When he's adopted, he transfers his obsession to a tree in the back yard of his adoptive parents, & relates to the tree as the incarnation of his true mother.
He's a strange boy, & his adoptive mother seems on some level to actually fear him, while his adoptive grandmother treats him quite viciously as an unwanted outsider. Clearly his conviction at the orphanage then in his new home that one or another tree as his actual parent is a manifestation of his sense that he is unloved by the adults in his environment, & is not at the beginning of the story anywhere close to an occult event.
When the infertile couple discover they are pregnant after all, the new infant becomes increasingly a threat to the the emotional well being of the adopted boy. The story unfolds with strange subtleties, because the boy poses no actual threat to anyone, but the parents' growing desire to send him back to the orphanage is excused by their growing sense that the boy, rather then themselves, are menacing or dangerous. Their insistance that he is a threat to their own newborn makes him an increasing brunt of considerable emotional abuse, all the sadder because his adoptive parents (apart from the grandmother) never actually intended not to love him.
To this point the story is strictly psychological, about disturbed adults imposing their own unhealthy states of mind on a thoroughly innocent boy who at most is just a little disturbed, justifiably so considering the lack of consistent affection. The adults persist in blaming him for issues he is not really causing. His tragedy causes him increasingly focus on the back yard tree which doing nothing at all is nevertheless more nurturing & loving than his unintentionally cruel foster parents.
Then one night he vanishes, & the story takes a decidedly spooky turn as the tree he regarded as his real mother begins to change & influence the dysfunctional household. The mystery of the boy's disappearance is a piece of detection revealed to the viewer bit by bit until the last piece of a psychotic puzzle falls into place at the very end. By that time the tree is unquestionably a supernatural presence focusing, like a magnifying glass, the household's collective guilt.
It's a fine, artful, atmospheric little thriller that slowly turns into a very unusual ghost story, without much in the way of tastelessness or excess. It is by the end genuinely a tale of supernatural horror, brutal & shocking, but it is much too rich a tale of characters to be regarded as only horror. For fans of over-the-top horror cinema, Acacia might not be sufficient, but for fans of good weird cinema, this Korean entry is an improvement over the usual fare.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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