Music in Epitaph

The aspect of Epitaph which stood out to me the most was the type and the use of music. Throughout the film there are long periods of silence broken by sudden noises, common to other horror movies. Unlike other horror movies however, which usually use an eerie genre of music which conveys dread and danger, much of the background music in Epitaph sounds more common, something that could be listened to outside of a horror setting. In a way, the use of this almost pleasant music makes the movie even darker. Connected to this is the ambivalent approach to death which the movie takes, as we discussed in class. The sections of the movie that are meant to shock the audience, such as the dead girl pulling Jung-man into her coffin in the morgue of the hospital, are highlighted by silence then sudden commotion. The sections with death generally are silent, expressing some sort of relief, or have a background of music which creates a welcoming attitude towards dying. This may be a stretch, but the use of the more common, Korean music in the background rather than general horror music could be a statement of Korean culture and nationality. Under Japanese colonialism the importance of maintaining Korean culture may have been an inspiration for the movie.
Another aspect of interest for me is the setting of the hospital. Hospitals embody the phenomena of emergency, relief, healing, sickness, the connect both ends of the spectrum, life and death and everything in between. This made me wonder if the story was written first, and a hospital was then chosen to represent the events, or if the setting was decided first. To have an environment in which a car crash, a doctor-child relationship, a death-marriage, and more can all take place can be seen as suggesting or representing all of the individual qualms present in each person's mind. The hospital is experiencing all of this, is scarred, like the colonized Koreans, and eventually tumbles, like the deaths of some of the characters.