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Norwegian Woods

Synopsis

A little cracker of a low budget horror comedy, Norwegian Woods is a great partner for the new King of Korean B-Movies, the gut-busting Chaw. In woods nowhere near Norway, two bun-fighting gangsters try to bury a body, a tense businessman and his mistress park in the bushes, and three straying school kids get high. They do a great job themselves of tearing each other apart before the local sickle-swinging serial killer takes a turn: stalking his victims in yellow wellies, he is after more livers for his mother. Warning to book fans: not based on the novel by Haruki Murakami.

Reviews

As great as the book may be, no, this is not the film version of Kafka-esque Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, currently pencilled for release next year. This is instead a farcical black comedy from Korea, which tells the tale of a pair of inept gangsters with a body to bury, a family man’s mistress, three glue-sniffing school kids and one liver-craving psycho killer, almost a Korean Norman Bates, who all enter the woods on one fateful day. What follows is a fragmented narrative which offers a variety of comedic elements in a classic story of wrong-doers being punished for their misdemeanours, where chance encounters between these mishmashed groups of people may mean the difference between life and death. Sure its camp, reeking of B-movie and at times a bit lacking in direction, but is this not the very nature of farce? It is arguably one of the oldest types of comedy; this film is more A Midsomer Night’s Dream than traditional horror comedy offerings. Norwegian Woods and its Fanomenon sister film Chaw offer an intertextuality which gives Hollywood a friendly poke; the Pulp Fiction comparisons in the exposition are a subtle but nice knowing wink, and the entire story as a twist on the slasher in the woods story is cheeky but well thought through, first signified by the entire thing being shot in broad daylight as opposed to the ominous night which we are so accustomed to with the slasher sub-genre. Thankfully, the strands of this comic caper are effectively pulled together in the end, and there is a fair share of tacky splatter along the way. However, a darker side is offered in the characterisation and comedy. We have seemingly disparate groups of people, all of whom have ‘sinned’ in some way but all of whom are very different; for example, the would-be rapist high school boy is distinctly evil in comparison to even the serial killer himself. Do what you will with this: it is either a commentary on personality types and what makes a good person, or it is a camp B-movie with a nice bit of splatter but a whole lot more farce. At times, there is a distinct feeling of missing something, something probably lost in translation. This is always going to be an issue with any film not in English, as so much comedy is inextricably linked to words, in puns and innuendo. However, the more visual and slapstick jokes are wonderfully odd and well executed in a way which East Asian cinema has come to excel at. Horror comedy has of late been thought of as a British tour de force since Shaun of the Dead, but this year, along with Chaw, Fanomenon shows a quick and quirky international take on a genre which is at risk of becoming dried out