Gaslighting Elevated to Existential Terror

Read Time:5 Minute, 32 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Splendid Outing (Hwaryeohan wichul)
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Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Drama
Year Released: 1978, Radiance Films Blu-ray 2025
Runtime: 1h 35m
Director(s): Kim Soo-yong
Writer(s): Yong-seong Kim
Cast: Yun Jeong-hie, Lee Dae-kun, Lee Yeong-ha
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.radiancefilms.co.uk, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: What happens when success, independence, and status fail to protect you from the structures designed to break you? SPLENDID OUTING opens with that unsettling thought embedded in its premise, and it never lets go. Kim Soo-yong’s 1978 film plays out like a waking nightmare, one that begins in the world of professional achievement and ends in a suffocating landscape of control, denial, and enforced identity. What makes the film so enduring and so disturbing is how it presents its cruelty, as if to insist that this is not an anomaly but an extension of the society that produced it.

Yun Jeong-hie delivers a performance of remarkable restraint as Gong Do-hee, a woman whose authority and competence are immediately undercut the moment she steps outside the structures that validate her success. The film understands that horror doesn’t require monsters when social systems are already predatory. Her kidnapping is not framed as a crime, so much as a transition, a stripping away of autonomy carried out with bureaucratic inevitability. The island setting becomes less just a location than a pressure chamber, designed to test how much of a person can be erased while still keeping them alive.

Kim Soo-yong’s direction is precise and deeply unsettling, favoring psychological disorientation over overt shocks. The horror in SPLENDID OUTING creeps in through repetition, denial, and the constant insistence that Do-hee’s reality is incorrect. The fisherman who claims her as his wife is not portrayed as a singular villain but as an extension of a broader mindset, one that assumes entitlement to women’s bodies and identities. The true terror lies in how easily others accept this lie, how quickly an entire community collaborates in rewriting her existence.

What’s especially striking is how the film weaponizes normalcy. Everyday routines, conversations, and social expectations become instruments of control, reinforcing the idea that there’s more to violence than we expect. The gaslighting at the film’s core is relentless, eroding Do-hee’s sense of self while daring the audience to question how often similar dynamics are dismissed as tradition, culture, or misunderstanding. SPLENDID OUTING doesn’t ask for sympathy; it demands recognition.

The film's political scope is inseparable from its horror, yet Kim Soo-yong never turns the story into a moralistic statement. Working within the restrictive censorship of 1970s South Korea, the film embeds its critique beneath allegory and psychological unease. The island becomes a microcosm of authoritarian control, where dissent is erased not through overt brutality alone but through enforced narratives and communal complicity. That this message slipped past censors is a testament to the film’s intelligence and subtlety.

The film reinforces its themes through stark contrast. The open sea and natural landscapes offer no sense of freedom, only isolation. Wide shots emphasize Do-hee’s vulnerability rather than her surroundings’ beauty, while interiors feel claustrophobic and oppressive. The cinematography refuses to romanticize the setting, instead using space to underline how thoroughly trapped the protagonist has become. Every frame feels considered, reinforcing the idea that escape is not merely physical but psychological.

Seen today, the film feels unnervingly current. Its examination of how women are punished for independence, mistrusted when they speak, and pressured into conformity remains painfully relevant. SPLENDID OUTING doesn’t rely on period-specific anxieties; it taps into fears that transcend time and geography. That universality is what allows it to resonate so strongly decades later, especially as conversations around autonomy and institutional power continue to evolve.

Radiance Films’ Blu-ray release gives this long-overlooked work the presentation it deserves, allowing modern audiences to engage with it on its own terms rather than as a historical curiosity. The restoration highlights the film’s deliberate pacing and visual severity, emphasizing how carefully its horror is constructed. This is a restoration of a movie that demands to be part of the larger conversation in horror and political cinema.

SPLENDID OUTING is not an easy watch, nor is it meant to be. It’s a film that understands horror as a reflection of lived experience rather than escapism, one that uses fear to expose the mechanisms of control hiding in plain sight. Its power lies in its refusal to comfort, offering instead a stark reminder that the most terrifying systems are often the ones society insists are normal.

Bonus Materials:
New 4K restoration by Radiance Films
Uncompressed mono PCM audio
Audio Commentary by Ariel Schudson (2025)
Interview with filmmaker Lee Chang-dong (2025)
Interview with assistant director Chung Ji-young (2025)
Stranded but Not Afraid: The Island Women of Classic Korean Cinema – a visual essay by Pierce Conran
Newly improved English subtitles
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Chung Chong-hwa and Pierce Conran and archival writing by Director Kim Soo-yong
Limited edition of 2500 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip, leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

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[photo courtesy of RADIANCE FILMS, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]

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