When a failed entrepreneur (kim Jeong-chul) mysteriously disappears off a ship headed to an island slated for ecotourist development, his drinking buddy (Choi Yun-seok) — who just happens to be a reporter! — is unfairly blamed for the death. No official inquiry takes place but the surviving journalist does feel compelled to quit his job and set his reputation aright by conducting his own unofficial investigation with his boss (Park Am) in tow. Which brings them both to a strange isle peopled almost entirely by women who have created a puzzling culture incorporating shamanism, deep-sea fishing, and necrophilia.
At first I admit I found Iodo somewhat difficult to track what with talk of frozen sperm and spirit possession casually tossed about. But by the end, I was fine with matter-of-factly accepting narrative elements such as a poorly timed sneeze and the potential powers of an incandescent infertility treatment. Can a Ponzi scheme dependent on abalone reproduction make an entire community filthy rich? Is chemical dumping or sisterly sorcery responsible for a handsome schemer's undoing? Can one woman (Kwon Mi-hye) actually strangle herself with a satin scarf? Best of all, how does her tattooed rival (Lee Hwa-shi) stiffen the limp genitals of their dead lover? (Warning: It ain't pretty!)
So many questions I'd never considered came into play in Iodo. And you know what? I was game for all of them. "It'll be doomsday. The end of human civilization," someone screams near the end of this Kim Ki-young freak show. That cry has become louder in recent years. And so this unusual concoction of sexploitation and eco-terrorism might initially register as outlandish nonsense but ends up feeling like an ahead-of-its-time warning about global apocalypse through climate change.
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