“This used to be a home to an American missionary,” the realtor tells carpenter Jae-pil (Lee Sung-min) and Sang-gu (Lee Hee-joon) of the dilapidated country house that the stepbrothers are about to buy and refurbish so that they can enjoy a quiet life together. “Villagers were so grateful that they built him a Western-style home.” 

Writer/director Nam Dong-hyub’s feature debut similarly imports American furnishings to its Korean setting, reimagining Eli Craig’s deconstructive redneck horror comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010), with Jae-pil and Sang-gu the sweet-natured hicks whom city folk keep prejudicially confusing with backwoods serial killers. Nam keeps things fresh with some unexpected recombinations of story elements from William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) - but mostly this is high body-count cabin-in-the-woods slaughter charmingly reconfigured as a comedy of errors, where first impressions can be misleading and handsomeness is in the eye of the beholder.

- Anton Bitel