From the Filmex festival in Tokyo: It is Wednesday morning in Japan, Tuesday night back home in NY. I have just finished breakfast in my hotel, the Presso Inn, feasting on pastry and excellent black coffee. The people sitting next to me speak English with accents, and the main subject of conversation is not last night`s blood-letting South Korean film, “Bedevilled,” but the difficulty of sleeping with jet lag. I say nothing, but I have been sleeping well considering the 14-hour time difference with NYC. Perhaps it is because this is my seventh visit to Tokyo in as many years, or because I pop a few Melatonin capsules before going to bed.

Anyway, “Bedevilled,” by director Jang Cheol-soo, is a well-constructed slasher-revenge movie. A young woman, Hae-won (Ji Sung-wen), is having problems with life in Seoul, working as a bank officer. So she takes a small boat to Moo-do Island to visit a childhood friend, Bak-run (Seo Yeong-hee), and take a break from the big city. How was she to know that her friend is living a life of hell? Her husband regularly beats her and sometimes imports a hooker from Seoul for violent sex, which his wife and her young daughter can hear. The last third of the movie consists of Bak-run`s revenge, in which she single-handidly wipes out just about everybody on the island. (I wanted to cheer.) Did I mention that Bak-run is sexually attracted to Hae-won, and comes on to her as the two bath in the nude in an island pond? Or that the young girl is sexually molested by her father?

Now I am off to another day of Asian films. Stay tuned. And have a nice Thanksgiving.