Cobweb

Plot

Kim Yeol, the director of a hugely successful debut film, has since fallen out of favor with critics, who dismiss his increasingly commercial melodramas and compare him unfavorably with his late mentor, the acclaimed director Shin Sang-ho. Struggling with the pressure, Kim relies heavily on antidepressants. After having a vivid dream about his latest film, Cobweb, he becomes convinced that recreating the dream's scenes will turn the film into a masterpiece. Believing that abandoning this opportunity out of fear of criticism would be a sin, he decides to change the ending despite having already completed the film. However, the sets are being dismantled, the actors are committed elsewhere, and the revised screenplay has been rejected by the Ministry of Culture and Information for its supposedly decadent portrayal of the heroine, Min-ja.

Kim nevertheless gathers the cast and crew for an unauthorized reshoot. His only major ally is Mi-do, the heir to the production company, who becomes fascinated by the new screenplay's Kafkaesque quality. With her financial support, the set is preserved and filming resumes, despite constant opposition. A Ministry official arrives to stop the production, only to be plied with alcohol, while the crew eventually locks the set and disconnects its telephones to prevent anyone from leaving. When a supporting actor playing a hunter attempts to escape after becoming furious with his role and the rewritten story, he too is subdued and confined. To conceal the illegal shoot, the crew prepares a fake anti-communist screenplay and uses it to obtain the authorities' cooperation.

The production becomes even more chaotic when actress Han Yu-rim returns despite being scheduled for another production. Having been promised that the reshoot will take only a day, she becomes furious when the work proves far more demanding, particularly after real spiders are used during filming without her consent. After a bitter confrontation with Mi-do and a revelation concerning her pregnancy and affair with fellow actor Ho-se, Yu-rim appears ready to abandon the film. Mi-do attempts to replace her but proves incapable of acting convincingly in front of the cameras, leaving Yu-rim as the only viable choice. She eventually returns and delivers a powerful performance. Meanwhile, Kim becomes increasingly obsessed with completing his vision, even seeing a hallucination of his dead mentor telling him that trusting himself is the essence of talent.

For the final scene, Kim insists on shooting a single continuous long take ending with the set being set on fire. During the take, Mi-do realizes that the supporting actor and a Ministry official are still trapped upstairs and desperately begs Kim to stop. Kim refuses, unwilling to sacrifice the shot, and completes the sequence before the two men are rescued. Despite the chaos, the authorities ultimately allow the production to continue, and the completed Cobweb is eventually screened. Kim receives the applause and recognition he has long desired, but his expression remains empty. His apparent triumph is undermined by the revelation of the secret behind his career.

Years earlier, during a fire on one of Shin Sang-ho's sets, Shin was left unconscious inside while everyone else escaped. Kim, then his assistant director, tried to rush back into the flames but was restrained. In that moment, however, he decided to steal Shin's unpublished screenplay instead. He secretly took the manuscript and used it as the basis for his acclaimed debut, taking credit for the work himself. Only Kim and Chairman Baek, who had encountered him while stealing money from Shin's safe during the fire, know the truth. Kim's pursuit of a masterpiece through Cobweb is therefore revealed as an attempt to prove himself and escape the guilt of having built his career on his mentor's stolen work.

Production

Principal photography began on March 8, 2022 and concluded on June 6, 2022.

The film alternates between two series of sequences: scenes in colour depicting the events that happen while the crew is filming under constraints of time and censorship, with somehow reluctant actors, who have been asked to come back in emergency to the film studio for two days; and scenes in black-and-white, that are the results of these studio shooting scenes.

Release

Cobweb has been invited to the out of competition section of the 76th Cannes International Film Festival which premiered worldwide on May 25, 2023. The film was invited to the competition section of the 70th Sydney Film Festival. It will also screen in the Noves Visions section at the 56th Sitges Film Festival. The film has had a limited release in Australia on October 4 through Umbrella Entertainment and Dendy Cinemas. It was released in France on November 8, 2023.

Reception

Box office

As of October 14, 2023, the film has grossed US$2,174,044 at the local box office and accumulated 306,700 admissions from 209 screens.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of 21 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10.

Variety called the film a "frantic, flimsy moviemaking meta-farce".