Kim Jee-woon’s Cobweb

It was a time of censorship, but not necessarily Puritanism. Director Kim Yeol is a 1970s Korean filmmaker was a long stretch of lurid sexual potboilers under his belt. His first film was critically acclaimed, but many suspect it was greatly shaped by his mentor, Director Shin, who died during its production. He now has a vision for how to make his latest film a masterpiece, but neither his studio boss nor the censors want to let him recall the cast for reshoots. He will just have to work around them in Kim Jee-won’s Cobweb, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on VOD.

Director Kim is absolutely not based Kim Ki-young, the late cult filmmaker best known for the original The Housemaid, as his heirs and the producers of Cobweb clearly established through an arbitration agreement. No, this “Director Kim” has been grinding out trashy thrillers since his tragic debut made a notorious splash. After wrapping his latest movie, also titled Cobweb, he literally has a flash of inspiration, prompting him to rewrite most of the second half.

President Baek, the studio boss and Director Shin’s widow, does not want the additional expenses and the state censors will not approve his new pages, because they are weird, especially the ending (which is true). However, Shin Mi-do, Director Shin’s niece and the studio finance chief, recognizes the brilliance of his revisions. She also has an in with the head of the censorship office, so she approves his reshoots while her aunt is out of the country on business. Since they are revising extensively, the one promised day of reshoots will not be sufficient, so Mi-do literally locks cast and crew inside the soundstage. Chaos and tension ensue.

Cobweb is sort of like Noises Off with the pressure of state censors looking over everyone’s shoulders. The manic farcical action is a bit of throwback to Kim Jee-woon’s zany The Good, the Bad, the Weird, from the filmmaker better known for darker horror and thrillers like I Saw the Devil, The Age of Shadows, and Dr. Brain. Some of the supporting characters are maybe a bit too wacky, like the method actor playing a detective, who pretends to investigate Director Kim, to stay in character. However, the way the film-with-the-film evolves and takes on greater significance as we learn Director Kim’s backstory is quite clever.

In fact, the black-and-white retro-horror-looking scenes from the fictional film are wonderfully stylish and affectionately droll. Director Kim’s “weird ending” lives up to its promise. Kim Jee-won and cinematographer Kim Ji-yong stage some incredible sequences, like Director Kim’s long climatic tracking shot, which we see from an incredibly messy behind-the-scenes perspective and as a finished product. In fact, their use of the sealed soundstage and its impressively designed sets is consistently inventive.

Song Kang-ho (from Parasite and dozens of other major Korean films) really dials it down as Director Kim, but his quietly neurotic demeanor works well in the center of all the mayhem. Frankly, Jeon Yeo-been consistently out-crazies him as the forceful Shin Mido. Jang Young-nam makes a wonderfully bossy diva portraying President Baek, while Krystal [Jung] is a spectacular high-strung, high-maintenance mess as the emotionally fragile starlet Han Yu-rim.

Michel Gondry’s latest (yet to be released in the U.S.) film, The Book of Solutions, also focuses on a difficult filmmaker struggling to realize his idiosyncratic vision, but Cobweb is bolder, more visually striking, and considerably less annoying. Cobweb and the Cobweb-within are a lot fun, albeit in strange and sinister ways. Highly recommended for fans of Kim Jee-woon and nostalgic genre homages in the Grindhouse tradition, Cobweb opens tomorrow (2/9) in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7.