Ep. 22: The Wailing (2016)

  5.0/7.0

Hello to all you lovely souls and welcome back to The Wytch Files.  In episode 22, I take an in-depth look at the South Korean movie "Goksung" or "The Wailing" in English directed by Hong-jin Na.  The movie was released on May 12, 2016 and stars Do-wan Kwak, Jung-min Hwang, Jun Kunimura, Chun Woo-hee and Hwan-hee Kim.

The director Hong-jin Na was interviewed for "The Playlist" about the movie in 2016.  He was also interviewed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016 and by Screenanarchy when the movie was released so please check the interviews out.

Korean shamanism figures heavily in this film so I spend a lot of time in the episode discussing it.  I wanted to provide you with a few articles for further reading if you are interested.  The training process of the Mudang or Korean shaman is discussed in this article by Jongsung Yang.  This article by Keith Howard discusses the use of paper for creation of ritual symbols for a type of Korean gut (ritual).  A Chaesu gut, a ritual to increase prosperity and good fortune is described in this article by John A. Grim.  In this dissertation by Jinseok Seo, the role of shamanism in Korean society is discussed. Lastly, here is another article by Nami Lee and Eun Young Kim about the Sitkimgut ritual, a ritual for transforming death and sickness into rebirth and integration.

I hope you enjoy the episode and check out some of Director Hong-jin Na's other film work and enjoy the playlist below for "The Wailing".  Be sure to join me on my next episode and follow the show on Twitter and Instagram where it is @thewytchfiles and The Wytch Files on Facebook.

The music for the episode was provided by Free Music Archive.  The songs featured are:

Summons and Nest by Lazenbee Industries

Plague by Kai Enge

Fog, Hibernation, Breath of Death part 1, and Lucerna by Sergey Cheremisinov

Ashen by Misha Dioxin

Passion by Borrtex

Theme music X-Files Theme Parody by Mallon Khan. 

If you have any feedback or review suggestions, please contact me!

If you're liking the show, please review it on iTunes, Stitcher and iHeart.