In spite of its sensationalistic title and cringe-worthy, torture-porn-like premise, “A Bloody Aria” isn’t just another South Korean gore-fest in the tradition of Park Chan-wook. Much like Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” “Aria” grills viewers for regarding violence as a form of entertainment. But writer-director Won Shinyeon is quite a bit defter than Mr. Haneke in terms of implicating the audience and persecuting its tendency to tolerate and justify violence that passes as vigilantism or heroism. In other words, Mr. Won is asking whether we should relish watching underdogs taking revenge on evildoers, and whether the “Lethal Weapon” and “Saw” franchises (to name but two) are actually of the same cloth.

In “A Bloody Aria,” which begins a weekend engagement Friday at the ImaginAsian Theater, the audience surrogate is Young-sun (Lee Byeong-jun), a music professor and professional opera singer who speaks multiple languages and drives a shiny new Mercedes-Benz. He is the personification of high culture, but he likes living on the edge just beneath that façade of sophistication: He juggles extramarital affairs, snorts cocaine, drives drunk, and runs red lights. While escorting his protégée, Injeong (Cha Ye-ryeon), home following her first audition, Youngsun takes the long route with the intent of deflowering the young musician. But a quartet of menacing hillbillies soon stumbles upon the pair and proceeds to terrorize them, “Deliverance”-style.

Unlike the torture in “Funny Games,” which seemed random and unwarranted, the violence in “A Bloody Aria” is more deliberate. The victims here seem to have invited the attacks by blatantly slighting and deceiving their antagonists, who appear compassionate and hospitable initially. Young-sun and In-jeong’s arrogance, suspicion, and fear seem all too human, though, given that the hillbillies have rotten teeth, kill birds for sport by feeding them poisoned rats, and keep a beleaguered abductee named Hyun-jae (KimShi-hoo) tied up and wrapped in a burlap sack. The mistrust, misunderstanding, and miscommunication gradually simmer to a boil. Hyun-jae eventually snaps and exacts revenge against his tormentors with hidden tae kwon do prowess. Disturbingly, the maddening violence and torture don’t seem at all gratuitous. Mr. Won also makes some pointed references to the hierarchical and patriarchal systems prevalent in the Korean military and police, as the bird killer, Oh-geun (Dal-su Oh), apparently became deranged after his army superior beat him with a baseball bat and broke his eardrum. But the film doesn’t quite connect the dots among bullying, the social pecking order, and patriotism.

Mr. Won is single-mindedly interested in getting his points across, even at the cost of narrative coherence. Toward the end, “Aria” becomes increasingly far-fetched and redundant when it turns out that the ringleader of the hillbillies, Bong-yeon (Lee Mun-shik), is himself a long-suffering victim of bullying who enjoys receiving it as much as dishing it. The stylistic inventiveness that Mr. Won exhibits early in the film — such as freeze-frames and digitally enhanced flashbacks — vanish entirely by the film’s midsection. “A Bloody Aria” certainly makes its points eloquently, but one sees glimpses of a film that could rise to much more biting and meaningful levels of satire.

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