To be frank with you, the most impressive part of South Korean independent film “The Nature Man” is its end credits. You will instantly see that its director did a lot of stuffs during the production of the film, and you will surely admire that even though the movie is a one-joke comedy which goes on a bit too long in my humble opinion.

The story mainly revolves around In-gong (Byun Jae-shin) and Byeong-jin (Jung Yong-hoon), two young YouTubers who are going to some remote rural mountain area at the beginning of the story. The main subject of In-gong’s YouTube channel is haunted places, and he was recently approached by some guy who claimed that he saw ghosts around his house. Although he does not believe this guy’s claim much, In-gong decides to go there anyway mainly because he desperately needs more subscribers and viewers right now, and Byeong-jin accompanies him just because this may also help his own YouTube channel.

However, as they get closer to where that “man of nature” lives, things do not go that well for them in one way or another. As they go deeper into that remote rural mountain area, they become more isolated from the outside world, and then some of the electronic equipments including their smartphones get broken due to a little unfortunate incident. While understandably being quite annoyed, In-gong keeps going anyway, and Byeong-jin has no problem with that at all.

When they finally encounter the man of nature, In-gong and Hyeong-jin are caught off guard a bit by his rather ominous appearance, and that is just one of many things to baffle them. Although he willingly takes them to his little residence and then shows them some hospitality, he is often rather gruff and aggressive for no apparent reason, and he also shows a number of bizarre behaviors. For example, his daily diet is pretty simple on the whole, but then In-gong witnesses him eating something else at night. When the host eventually tells a spooky experience he supposedly had some time ago, In-gong cannot help but wonder whether the host really tells him everything, and that makes the host look more suspicious than before.

In contrast, Byeong-jin simply goes along with this increasingly weird circumstance while casually enjoying more of their host’s hospitality, and this often makes In-gong quite annoyed and frustrated. No matter how much he tries to be nice to the host, those odd behaviors of the host continue to exasperate him in one way or another. Understandably, In-gong becomes a bit paranoid, and he even comes to suspect whether Byeong-jin is actually hiding something behind his back – especially when he sees Byeong-jin cheerfully having some private talk with the host at one point.

The screenplay by director/writer Noh Yong-seok, who handled many other things in the production of the film besides editing, music, and cinematography, also seems to be merely stuck with its main characters with no apparent direction, but then their situation becomes a little more interesting with an unexpected plot turn during the second half of the film. With more absurdity surrounding him along the story, In-gong eventually tries to get away as soon as possible, but, of course, he only gets stopped by one thing after another, while becoming all the more unnerved and confounded by whatever is going on around him.

However, it was rather hard for me to care about the story and characters. As sensing more of the repetitive aspect of its narrative, I could not help but feel impatient during my viewing, and I was not so particularly surprised by what is eventually revealed around the end of the story. Sure, this neatly explains almost everything in the story, and I also came to have some understanding on what the movie is actually about, but I think it would be more effective if it were delivered by a tighter narrative.

Moreover, the main characters of the film are a little too superficial to engage us. While In-gong and Byeong-jin remain to be your average banal YouTubers even at the end of the story, their host is simply defined by a bunch of strange behaviors without much interest to hold our attention, and we come to observe these three main characters from the distance without much care or attention. Considering how they play their scenes as straight as possible, I am sure that the main cast members of the film are good performers, but their mostly solid efforts are not supported enough on the whole, and that is another disappointing aspect of the movie.

In conclusion, “The Nature Man”, which was recently released in South Korean theaters despite being completed several years ago, is fairly amusing at times, but it is less successful compared to Noh’s first feature film “Daytime Drinking” (2008). Although it is clearly influenced by the works of Hong Sang-soo, that film amused me a lot more than expected, and it looked to me like the starting point of another promising South Korean filmmaker to watch at that time.

Sadly, Noh has been rather dormant during last several years after his second feature film “Intruders” (2013), and “The Nature Man” is not a satisfying comeback work, but I still admire his considerable efforts behind it. He will probably move onto making the next film, and I can only hope that I will be more entertained by whatever will come from him.