I have always gravitated more towards horror films that explore the cerebral rather than the visceral, and luckily there are a number of such pieces screening at the 13th Philadelphia Film Festival. Essentially a cross between a traditional genre film and a contemporary family drama, Acacia is the latest project from Korean director Park Ki-hyung. With both Whispering Corridors and Secret Tears to his credit, Park has been hailed as one of the leading creative forces in Korean horror filmmaking. Acacia follows in the path of those films as a quiet, haunting piece that examines family tragedy through a parabolic lens and supplements it with a supernatural wrinkle.

Mi-sook and her husband Do-il are happily married but have been unable to conceive a child after numerous attempts. Feeling discouraged about his wife's chances, Do-il discusses the possibility of adoption with his father and receives his blessing. Initially resistant to the idea, Mi-sook has a change of heart upon viewing a somewhat discomforting drawing (whose style is definitely in the vein of Edvard Munch) created by one of the children at the orphanage. Little Jin-sung is a lonely, joyless little boy who spends most of his time with his sketch pad, but Mi-sook feels a strange affinity for him. The couple ends up adopting the boy and are quite happy with their new family.

But it is clear that Jin-sung is not the normal child they had hoped for, and it seems that Do-il's father is the only one who can understand him. The boy spends an inordinate amount of time sitting in the branches of the acacia tree in the backyard, and it is soon revealed that he believes it is inhabited by the spirit of his dead biological mother. Jin-sung quickly begins to feel unwanted in his new home, and his thoughts of isolation are exacerbated when Mi-sook unexpectedly becomes pregnant with a child of her own. A series of bizarre accidents and horrific nightmares shortly begin to invade the lives of the Kim family, while at the same time the acacia tree begins to bloom for the first time in years.

Acacia shares many of its strengths and drawbacks with another grim tale of family dissolution, Dark Water. Like Hideo Nakata's film, Acacia makes sparing use of horror elements to accentuate its very down-to-earth tale of family tragedy. The supernatural elements embodied by the strange acacia tree are mostly downplayed in favor of carefully-constructed scenes that explore the deeply personal aspects of loss and regret. Park treats the subject matter gingerly in Acacia while examining how psychological trauma can affect one's perception and memory regarding specific events. The film ends with an expertly-edited sequence that explains the crux of the story, presented through a series of sepia-toned flashback sequences that are seamlessly integrated with the present tense story arc. (And on a side note, Jin-sung's brief interaction with his adorable neighbor Min-jee is one of the sweetest things I've ever seen in a film, horror or otherwise.)

But the film is also littered with a string of dissapointments that tend to diffuse the atmosphere. Like many current horror film directors, Park Ki-hyung relies on an overabundance of extremely loud sound effects to punctuate many of the scares. It's a given that sudden noises are frightening, but the same effect could be achieved in nearly any genre using this technique. Certain scenes, while clearly intended to establish mood and motive, end up looking rather silly (Acacia contains the most pretentious sweater-unraveling setpiece in film history), and it feels at times like the director is simply trying too hard to infuse the material with artificial horror. I applaud the effort since the film is quite unsettling at times (notably the striking usage of red yarn), but overall the results are uneven.

Acacia is also jam-packed with "reveal" sequences, only some of which are even remotely surprising, and by the end of the film you'll be expecting to see something unexpected at every turn. A handful of unnecessary slow-motion sequences and an astonishingly poor CG effect conspire to topple the strong framework that the rest of the film has erected. The acting, while by no means poor, is still rather pedestrian and tends to do more to put the viewer to sleep than to unseat their expectations about the story. Mi-sook (Shim Hye-jin) has a persistently dour demeanor throughout the film that barely changes even during moments of high drama. Though suitably restrained, the performances are perhaps too subtle for their own good.

After several hours of careful deliberation, I'm still at a loss to offer a definitive verdict. (Perhaps the weather has affected my appreciation of the film. Take my advice and don't see Acacia late at night after you've already slogged through the rain to see three other movies.) The movie is evenly stacked with both the good and the bad, and what you derive from it will ultimately depend on what you're willing to tolerate. I loved the glacially-slow pace and the allegorical approach to family drama, but I was turned off by the cheap non-scares, the poker-faced acting and the somewhat obvious plot twists. I wanted to love this film, but I just can't bring myself to offer a whole-hearted recommendation. Acacia is still worth a look for those looking for a horror film twinged with melancholy, but its faults are too strong to be overlooked.

Thumbs Up, but again, just barely. Laced with themes of sadness and regret, Acacia is an intriguing hybrid that squanders its promising premise with a number of unfortunate missteps.