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Jong (Kwak Do Won) is a bumbling policeman in a small town where
nothing much happens, so most of the time there's little to do - which is
how he likes it ... until the village is hit with a series of murders, and
it seems the assailants have all developed rashes prior to killing
whoever's in their way in a rage, brutally dismembering them and sometimes
even eating some of their flesh. There's a rumour that a stranger (Jun
Kimura) living in the surrounding woods is responsible for this, but at
first, Jong and his colleagues pay this little heed ... until they've
followed up any other lead and thus Jong and a colleague search the
strangers house - and find photos of all the victims, both before and
after the murders, next to something looking like an altar. Confronted
with this, the stranger refuses to even speak, even when Jong destroys his
altar after having found a photo of his daughter (Kim Hwan-hee) among the
stranger's photos. Then the daughter develops a rash and shows violent
behaviour, and it's soon clear she's suffering from what all the homicidal
villagers have suffered - and thus Jong takes her to a shaman (Hwang
Jung-min) who tries his best to heal her, claiming the stranger is a ghost
... but something goes wrong, and when his daughter is doing worse than
ever, Jong and friends, not wholly convinced the stranger in fact is a
ghost, go to his place to lynch him. But even after that is done (or Jong
at least things it is), the affair is far from over, and a woman in white
(Chun Woo-hee) who has been seen near almost all of the murder scenes
might be the key to this - or the source of all evil ... If
you're at all into utter shocks blended with some light-footed, relaxed
comedy is your thing, Goksung is definitely your movie - and this
combination works far better on screen than I make it sound in writing,
the film's basic laid-back style works well as a base for utter shocks,
and very unheroic, fun characters and very likeable performances also go a
long way here ... but that said, Goksung is less than a perfect
movie - basically it just tries to be too epic for its own good, drags the
plot out with plottwist after plottwist, and after over 2 and a half
hours, a bit too much remains just utterly unexplained even for someone
like me who hates being spoon-fed explanations. The main problem here
though is that the story refuses to make total sense in retrospect, the
baddies are all remarkably absent of motives, and based on that some
dragged out sequences the film could have done without in hindsight. It's
still a totally ok watch if you don't care about the pay-off and the fact
that it's too long for its own good ...
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