Horror and Revenge: Return of the Repressed Colonial Violence

Abstract

The horror genre has often been theorized as a cultural form that dramatizes unsettled but repressed social dilemmas. With respect to the legacy of colonialism, the genre shares with melodrama a recurring structure of return through which past suffering and trauma are confronted. Utilizing the convention of “the unexpected arrival,” such films furthermore delineate the problematic relationship between colonial rule and postcolonial reckonings. I here analyze two films that, although separated by several decades, both feature key dimensions of the theme of return that forms an important conceptual component of the postcolonial historical imagination. The 1966 melodrama Yeraishang is an obscure “fallen woman” film set against the backdrop of the April Revolution of 1960 and its aftermath.1 The film’s reference to that historic event compels us to pay close attention to the implications of the revolution for the project of decolonization. The 2007 horror film Epitaph belongs to a group of recent South Korean films that focus on Koreans’ experience of colonial modernity and urban life through the prism of horror. The film is unique for configuring excessive violence and spectral haunting behind the veneer of the rational order of modern medicine. Through its use of the signs of terror, Epitaph presents a complex portrayal of colonial subjectivity rare in the South Korean film tradition.2