An unsuspecting Bo-Yeong (Ha Na Park) moves to the Korean hinterland to work as Wangs Jin Heos caretaker, with sinister intentions and only for the money. Could you be the last blood relative remaining? where Mrs. Kim (Jung Young-joo) is her only relative? This was her sole condition: do not bring anyone particularly children and do not show near the reservoir. Grandmother Wang’s giant villa in Gweemot is even scarier, as Walk suggests people are dying there, and Bo Yeong discovers that there are injuries from mysterious deaths at the site of the mansion.
Mostly, there are a few enjoyable elements of “Devil in the Lake” despite being presented with a bunch of clichés here and there, one of its highly profound and likeable aspects is writer/director Se-Woong’s Setup that is bustling with lots of intriguing stuff to explore. For instance, Wang’s erratic behavior when she goes from child-like temperamental bursts or suspiciously apathetic, to all of a sudden overpowering amounts of aggression makes it a whole lot more mystery filled. All of this combined drastically enhances the mystery of wanting to know how difficult it is to take care of someone. These quips regarding Wang build upon the notion of unexplained oddities existing at the Lantern House. Another mystery to the surreal emotions of the house was added when it was reported that Bo Yeong’s daughter Dajeong was trying to sneak themselves into the house against Wang’s orders, which further complicated things over at the house.
This tone does serve “Devil in the Lake” very well as it starts to go deeper into the supernatural. It starts off well on a smaller scale like the house having strange talisman protections, times when the neighbors come round to issue vague warnings, or Wang appearing to laugh in a creepy manner with Dajeong, that doesn’t create a strong feeling of creepiness but when set altogether presents an unsettling experience of living in the house. This combined with Dajem’s flodded creepy nightmarish imagination about being tormented but an evil cyclops, Wang appearing as a ghost that runs around and does strange things, or even her mysteriously disappearing and having the people look for her, and yes the assembly of these elements together is a lot fascinating. However Waq starts off abruptly to suddenly uncover Bo Yeung’s identity and her history. Nonetheless, it offers a fair amount of flashbacks and deep exposes of the pasts. Juyeol adds to the collection of impressive cinematic collage where calm Aiba and Jun wan together with Hu boss attack a girl in the sonant fic atmosphere. Am other of the relic is the pentagram and is further combined with occultism which was fun, it makes everything else absolutely fascinating.
Several problems occur in “Devil in the Lake.” As much as I appreciate the film, one of its major issues is the relatively low progression which makes the film run for much longer than it probably should. Since most of the film is centered around Bo Yeong coming to terms with Wang’s erratic and unpredictable dual-natured persona, the codependence is rendered more on mystery than an array of frights the premise would suggest. This continues for a lot of the second half too, especially the focus on the history of the lake and forests that surround the house. Most other sequences manage to sustain a bone chilling and unsettling tone during a decent amount of the film and especially before the climax while a few other moments are rather intense and chaotic. However, this abrupt shift in tone is somewhat frustrating due to the slower pace of events.
Like-wise, the dependence on clichés which are omnipresent here, as a harried single MP trying her best to rear a hyperactive kid combined with being a full time caregiver to an aged woman living in a big house filled with eerie mysteries, is not new and doesn’t much differentiate this from dozens of other efforts. It is not actually a drawback but in the end it does reduce this somewhat.
Having a good mystery and fantastic supernatural but suffering because of some pacing issues, ‘Devil in the Lake’ offers crystalline details especially to the admirers of this kind of high end slow burning genre cuisine which is becoming very common nowadays. This one together with general fans of the Asian genre cuisine is probably going to be the primary audience for this one as well.
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