Claudio Carvalho After unsuccessfully trying to have a baby of their own, Dr. Kim Do-il (Jin-geun Kim) and his father convince his wife Choi Mi-sook (Hye-jin Shim) to adopt a child in an orphanage. Mi-sook is connected to arts and chooses the six years Kim Jin-sung (Oh-bin Mun) that loves to draw trees. The boy becomes close to the eight years old next door neighbor Min-jee (Na-yoon Jeong) and is attracted to an old Acacia tree in their lawn. When Mi-sook unexpectedly gets pregnant, her mother asks her to return Jin-sung to the orphanage, beginning the rejection process of the boy. When the baby is born, Mi-sook does not treat Jin-sung well, who believes the acacia tree is his mother, and in a rainy night he vanishes. Along the next days, the family becomes insane, disclosing a dark secret about Jin-sung.South-Korean horror movies are the best in the genre usually supported by three points: ambiguity, boldness and originality in non-linear chillers, with a great twist in the end; The writers and directors are not afraid to usually explore bold situations that Hollywood does not dare to use – like for example death of children. These three factors are constant, and in "Acacia" is no exception. The ambiguity of the screenplay permits to disclose in a low-pace either a family drama or a supernatural story. All the situations have explanations; the viewer has just to join the pieces of the puzzle and find them. In this story, the innocence of the foster kid makes him believe that his mother is a tree because somebody had justified the loss of his mother in a rainy day explaining that she became a tree. The rejection process of the boy when the baby is born is usual between siblings, imagine with a little child brought from an orphanage. The greatest difficulty of South-Korean movies is that they force the viewer to think, and unfortunately many people are not used to do that, giving a low rating to a very good movie. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): Not Available

ddevil2347 ...with one big problem: To fully appreciate it, you have to watch it twice. Yet you probably don't want to, since it is terribly slow and you're frustrated by the confusing editing. The turning point is the first blood which the audience can't know of until the end. And without knowing it, the character development only seems odd and inexplicable. Not to mention the rage of our angry tree or the red wool... But If you know what happened, things are quite different. Especially between husband and wife. The boy's mother, in denial, passes the guilt to her husband. He, on the other other hand, can't deal with that pressure. Alone, without the attention or love of his wife and also loosing the counsel of the grandfather, he builds up enormous rage. They're both caught in a vicious cycle of guilt, anger and violence finally resulting in them killing each other (more or less).Another interesting aspect of the movie is the demise of the patriarch of the house. His pain lies in loosing control. First he struggles with the somewhat strange kid, then his son and daughter-in-law kill his grandchild and finally the girl next door robs the secret grave (the wooden necklace). Without the supernatural ant-part, this could have been very good. I would have killed him off with a stroke or something like that.Fortunally, supernatural scenes are quite rare in this movie. Most of the time they appear in dreams anyway. What's left are the angry ants and a moving branch.The movie's end somehow caught me. The last scene with its disturbing beauty and tranquility and the absolutely awesome credits. So I gave it a second chance before completely dismissing it as a waste of money. You should too. Its the age of DVD - jump to some scenes and re-watch them, you might come to like them too.

Atavisten About an adopted child in a family who when the parents get a child naturally, gets ignored. He then makes a close connection to an acacia tree in the garden.This is built up like most other Asian horror films, that is slow moving, using good cinematographers and focusing on creating atmosphere rather than just shocks. Somehow it manages to fail completely. When it tries to build up tension, the over the top editing takes it quickly away. The editing tries to make the film clever, instead it makes me not take it seriously at all. About the drama; how can they ignore their adopted son so soon? This looks like a cash-in on the horror boom and should be avoided.Trees can be very scary, this is not.

BennyM This movie has an original premise, but ultimately winds up a little too confused about where it wanted to go. The storytelling, which starts off with fine, mood-filled, dwelling shots, veers off into a style more reminiscent of standard psycho-thrillers as the conclusion draws near. One scene in particular (*SPOILER*: the death of the father-in-law) jars with the visual style right up to this point and seems to mark a clear break in the narrative. The first hour is absolutely riveting, though, and I'll certainly want to see other films by Ki-Hyung Park.