‘The Wailing’ Is a Korean Horror Masterpiece You Can’t Brace Yourself For

In the Korean media pantheon of possession horror is director Na Hong-jin’s 2016 film Wailing (Gokseong) shares a strange kinship with another dormant entry in the genre. Sure, it has the usual elements: a doe-eyed hero, a sarcastic side character who’s not long for this world, a wise shaman, some sort of demon, and the down-on-his-luck family member the protagonist is tasked with saving from spiritual ruin. But like Jang Jae Hyun’s movie 2024 Exhuma, wailing It takes these familiar hallmarks, injects them with real postcolonial trauma — Japan as an

numbers The is wailing, Like any good horror film worth its salt, It is a quiet, isolated country town where everyone knows each other. Here, an incompetent and conveniently lazy cop, who even his co-workers complain about, named Jung-gu (Kwak Do-won), suddenly becomes important to the job when a mysterious epidemic stalks the isolated South Korean village. All anyone knew was that whatever illness the people were suffering from sent them into a violent rampage, killing their loved ones and leaving them in a vegetative stupor. It’s a case that Jong-goo is ill-equipped to solve but is forced to tap into the height of his deductive prowess – however fortuitous and unlucky – to solve the strange event in their village when he claims his daughter. All signs point to the strange arrival of a Japanese foreigner called “Japanese Man” (played by Jun Kunimura) to their village. But his presence, despite his evil, is only the tip of the iceberg of suspects behind a mysterious conspiracy in the sleepy town.

When all the horrors come rushing to Jung-gu’s doorstep, the mystery disappears wailing”Nesting dolls filled with puzzles intertwine together, letting his paranoia seep off the screen and into the viewer’s consciousness. along the way, Wailing It doesn’t rely on cheap jumps to sell the sense of horror that rises to the surface. Instead, it persists. She’s hanging on by the shots. It allows fear to flourish at a distance, as something terrible looms just far enough to spot you, and then moves towards you at its own pace. It’s as apt a metaphor as any WailingCalculated pace. It builds awe not through noise, but through presence. And it is truly Good at that.

At the eye of the storm is Jung Joo – the bumbling cop at the center of it all – who, along with viewers, knows he’s on the right track, brandishing the case not as a series of drug users involved, but as something that transcends a mountain of empirical evidence. It doesn’t do him any good that he emerges from a random Japanese man’s nightmare, which makes the case of The Man Who Cried Wolf all the more serious before you factor in his brutal anti-stranger bias being bad for the credibility of his exaggerated interrogations.

The layers in all of this is Shogun– Such as a dispute over language. Jong-goo repeatedly hurls insults at the Japanese man, who he is 99 percent sure is behind everything — a choice entirely his own, even when his fellow officers are reluctant to follow his orders. All the while, a priest, clearly in over his head, acts as translator between Joon-goo — who takes recurring nightmares as evidence — and the Japanese man, who is visibly exhausted by the inconvenience of his admittedly religious isolation. The language barrier becomes another source of paranoia, another veil between truth and assumption. Wailing He delights in playing with themes and motifs.

The film owes its ominous atmosphere to the collective strengths of the cast: Kunimura as the mysterious intruder, Chun Woo-hee as the “mysterious woman,” and Hwang Jung-min as the smiling shaman whose ritual throws another key into the chaos. Their performances are a boon to the film’s dizzying megalomania. Viewers are right there with Jong-goo, as Peter Parker No going homethe spider-sense swings through a revolving room full of people smiling at him while, most likely, wishing him sick. It’s the kind of paranoia-fueled horror where danger might stare you in the face or help you search for the keys, even though they’re the ones who hid them.

This friction between certainty and doubt, bias and paranoia, is what makes… Wailing Such an interesting entry in the horror canon. He juggles several revolving canvases that never seem to fit together: part crime drama, part shamanic fever dream. However, it is. Accurately and destructively.

Her cinematography is fantastic. Every frame exudes air that leaves all its frightening, beautiful and disturbing images on the screen. All in an attempt to generate horror wearing an asymmetrical face, braised in dread and juxtaposed with the oppressive quiet of the countryside, where dangers can lurk between the hills or inside the unkempt homes of people you once felt safe around.

Wailing It’s not “elevated horror” or “cultural horror” in the way fans often call films that avoid shocking scares or engaging in uncomfortable politics. It’s a third, mysterious thing that becomes a novel: honesty. Hong-jin’s 2016 film relentlessly explores how bias, ego, and social standing can cloud judgment—especially when someone is expected to easily and repeatedly solve a puzzle larger than themselves. And somehow, even though Jong-goo is a dick, you sympathize with him. Not because of racism, of course, but he is a hero in his daughter’s eyes. Not because he’s a good cop (which he’s not), but because he’s her father. The father is God in the eyes of the child. And the fear of letting her down is so profound, it permeates the screen and soaks into the viewers’ bones—even as the puppeted image of his daughter stands in the doorways like Death itself.

By the time the film reaches its Orpheus-style conclusion, many of its gruesome horrors have already sunk beneath the surface. What remains is the watercourse. A giant wave threatens to pull viewers under with Jung-gu. And then, quietly, he leaves you with a feeling that resonates louder than any scream: Evil does not have to be insidious. Sometimes, he just sets the bait, not knowing what he’s going to catch, and reels in whatever bites on the line. Figuring out whether this evil is a perceived threat or a real threat is where things get messy for Jung-joo, making… Wailing This is a gem of a horror movie.

I’m not arrogant enough to claim that I’ve completely collapsed Wailing-or ExahomaIn this regard, their joint exploration of post-colonial trauma between Japan and South Korea. But what remains is unambiguous: a subject that functions as a one-way mirror – a subject that is universal in its reflection, personal in its sting. Wailing He captures that scab, weaving fear and confusion into something far more intimate. In all its chaos, it succeeds not only in horror, but also as a compelling, deeply affecting crime drama. It’s a film that haunts you long after the credits roll, not because it’s loud, but because it speaks clearly. What he says is scary.

Wailing Streaming on Hulu.

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