MovieChat Forums > Gokseong (2016) Discussion > Explanation I read at reddit.com

Explanation I read at reddit.com

posted 8 years ago by gustavopac
16 replies | jump to latest

Sequence of events:

Under influence of evil Tengu, Monk rapes and infects Police daughter.
Police destroys Monk's ritual room, kills his dog and threatens to kill him if he does not leave in 3 days.
In response, Monk hangs dead goat to curse police family further (father paralyse momentarily, daughter went rabid and kills neighbour). He also proceeds to prepare a ritual to revieve zombie to protect himself/kill villagers.
A good/famous Shaman was brought in by police's mother.
Shaman removed Tengu's hidden crow curse and performs a high risk out-of-body hex to kill Monk. For a successful ritual, Shaman warns police there should be no interruption / visiter / drinking etc.
Although the hex is directed at the Demon, the daughter being under the control of the Demon, also suffers in pain and pleads for her father to stop the hex.
Monk almost died from the Shaman's hex but wakens when the police interrupted the ritual. The hex backfires, giving opportunity for Demon to leave the Monk and control Shaman instead.
Monk (now good) returns to his room to recuperate. Youko sees that he is no longer possessed, hence did not hurt him even though he is weakened.
Good Monk awakes and remembers that the zombie is revieved and may hurt people. He panicks and hurries to find it.
Fearing for his daughter's life, the Police went with his friends to the Monk's house to kill him.
Planning to make the villagers sin and lessen the village's protection from Grandma or Youko, the Demon contols the zombie to lure Monk back to his house to be killed by villagers.
Monk tries to escape the angry villagers but fell down a short cliff. He cries at the thought of his past sins and at the irony of his circumstance as his original intent was to save the villagers.
Monk sees Youko and chases after her. Being a fox spirit possessing a young woman, perhaps she fears of being captured/exocised by the good Monk, or she is accquinted with the Monk in the past and does not wish to reunite with him.
While chasing, Monk slips down clift and knocked against police's lorry.
Police and gang throws Monk over road's cliff.
Shaman (now bad) laughs as the Deman's plan to make the villagers sinners was successful, and that the Demon was able to fully take over the body of the dead/critically injured Monk.
Shaman returns to the Police house to collect the souls. However, Youko overpowers him.
Fearing for his life, he abandons his mission and flees home. The Crow Demon reminds Shaman that he has to work for him by blowing off the lited candle (no buddha can protect him) and sending a dead crow (death omen).
Shaman tries to flee the village, but the Demon sends moths to further instil fear in Shaman for the consequences in abandoning his task.
Shaman returns back to village (as seen on the road signage "Gokseong") and resumes his task by tricking the police that the young woman is the demon instead of the Monk.
As the policeman has sinned, the Youko and Grandma can no longer prevent the demon's complete take over of the daughter, nor the deaths of his family. However, Youko tries to trap the Demon and prevent the Shaman from collecting their souls. The trap will be successful if the police does not step past the flower trap after the rooster crows 3 times.
Unfortunately, the police's faith wavered when he saw Youko with the infected human being's belongings (including his daughter's hairpin), and he returned home to find that his daughter has murdered the whole family.
Shaman then came to take photo/collect souls.

[–] smspencer69 8 years ago

Interesting explanation, though the fact that it's needed to explain what appear to be inconsistancies / plot holes just underlines that the film was let down by an incoherant conclusion.

[–] Martialhorror 8 years ago

From what I hear, the original cut explained everything a lot more clearly and even had an ending where the Shaman and Japanese Man get into the car (after the Shaman takes the photos of the dead family), drive out of town and get into a fatal car accident when the ghost woman appears in the middle of the road.

But the director re-edited the entire movie when he decided he wanted the audience to experience the same confusion of the protagonist, so removed the explanations, etc. I personally prefer it this way, as a large reason why I thought "The Wailing" is so fascinating is that so much is left to our interpretation. It's so fun to discuss.

"Ringu" is also a great horror film, but it didn't make me think about it like "The Wailing" did. Most horror movies don't, but obviously, many viewers either won't like the challenge or they just won't like what the director is going for. Fans use 'Ambiguous' to describe it, while detractors use 'Incoherent', but neither is right or wrong because it comes down to how you react to the film.

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[–] apis_fiume 8 years ago

If this was director's intention, he succeeded... because the viewers are given clues and have to play detectives once the movie finishes, to conclude what the he.ll was going on in the movie. Director should've given us a bit more to work with, during the movie.

[–] alexjl3 8 years ago

How can the monk die in a car accident when he already fell off a cliff, was hit bu a pick up truck, the n thrown off the cliff again, only to morph into a demon later on

[–] blairmaynard123 8 years ago

Interesting explanation, though the fact that it's needed to explain what appear to be inconsistancies / plot holes just underlines that the film was let down by an incoherant conclusion.

It is a good explanation. The conclusion isn't incoherant, it is confusing. Could you do better given the same plot? Could you tell the story better?

Maybe, but it would be tough because the plot depends on people become "possessed", "unpossessed", "good" or the devil incarnate. So people are always changing characters like bathing suits. Not an easy story to tell (other than having some kind of neon sign on their foreheads saying their current status). There is no apparent "how and why" of it all. How does a person become possessed? Why did they become possessed? Why didnt they become possessed? How many people can be possessed at the same time?

There is no cloud of insects or something visible that can be seen on the screen moving from one character to another clearly demonstrating who is possessed. This kind of movie would be tough to make, so I give the director "difficulty" points.

My main problem with the movie is there is too much "acting drama". Makes it annoying to sit through, but maybe that is just me.

[–] jrdragon40 8 years ago

I like the explanation about the shaman going from good to bad during the death hex being interrupted, but unfortunately the theory flops because at the end the shaman has a whole box full of photographs.

[–] Martialhorror 8 years ago

Does that really mean anything? The photographs vanish early on and the Japanese man claims he burned them. The protagonist checks the kitchen, finds evidence of something being burned, and it's never brought up again. We don't know if it's the photographs, or if all of them were burned.

Although now I find myself wondering that if the photographs contained the souls of the victims, would burning them free them or damn them- as if they already weren't? That's why I doubt all the photographs were burned, as it goes against the demons plot. More than likely, he hid them and the Shaman retrieved them later.

Furthermore, why would both of them have photographs if they were working together? The Shaman doesn't arrive to the village until later on and we even see an introductory shot of him driving up those mountains, so the Japanese man had to be taking the majority of the photographs. Then again, there are explanations for this as well. Maybe they alternate between the false savior and the demon, or maybe there are A LOT more religious agents under its control and we only saw two. But that's what I love about this movie. So many possibilities.

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[–] fipper_1 8 years ago

But this doesn't mention the last scene between the monk and the young priest. So the monk was the demon afterall?

[–] Martialhorror 8 years ago

Yes. They're going for an anti-Christ kinda vibe there, where in the Bible the anti-Christ dies and is possessed by the devil. Whether the demon is actually supposed to be the Anti-Christ, Satan, etc or if he's only using these motifs (like the holes in his hands)to screw with the Priest is unclear.

my reviews of martial arts and horror films
http://freewebs.com/martialhorror

[–] amaklp 8 years ago

That makes sense I guess.

[–] LoPanKnows 8 years ago

Best detailed outline I've read so far and the one that ties everything together with a ribbon.

I don't think he was resurrecting the zombie to protect himself though, I think the demon was trying to transfer to another body to avoid the death hex.

[–] wteutonin 8 years ago

What I like about this explanation is that it acknowledges that the chronology in the movie is not linear. There were points where I wasn't sure when the scene happened - in the past or the present.

I am still wondering about a couple of scenes:

1) The scene where the monk presumably rapes a woman. Was the woman the young lady who later shows up as a ghost? Or was she, as implied by the storyteller who describes that scene, the older lady who later hung herself? I didn't quite catch it in the movie, but she looked young.
Update: I decided I could be more helpful if I went to rewatch that scene. The woman he presumably raped (presumably, because it is shown as a story told by a guy, so could be just a rumor) was definitely not the young woman (the ghost), but the woman who later hung herself.

2) Dead bodies found in the well: who were they? It looked like the scene of a ritual, so at first I thought it was the policeman's family, then I thought maybe it's the ladies who were helping the shaman. Then at the very end again I thought that perhaps it was a flash forward into the future, and these were actually the policeman's wife and mother-in-law: that's how he "cleaned up" after his daughter to protect her. I don't know, nothing really makes perfect sense. Did you figure out whose bodies were in the well?

[–] animerika 8 years ago

I kind of disagree, some things are too far-fetched.

Who is Youko by the way?

[–] PopperTheKungFu-Dragon 8 years ago

I could go along with this explanation except for the fact that how could both the shaman and the Japanese guy be possessed at the same time?

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