The Wailing (Na Hong-jin)

[Stay Puft]

GOK-SEONG / THE WAILING
Dir. Na Hong-jin



IMDb page

[Stay Puft]

No thread for this? Now you've really let me down, Match Cut.

The ending is so intense I grinded my teeth into dust.

[number8]

Yeah it's a masterpiece of horror.

[Grouchy]

I was so confused by the plot of this movie. It has nice visuals but I couldn't understand the story.

[megladon8]

I found this incredibly disappointing.

It was so, so, so overlong.

[Stay Puft]

I was so confused by the plot of this movie. It has nice visuals but I couldn't understand the story.

I admit, sometimes I was thinking to myself "this might be bullshit," but I was also thoroughly entertained so it worked for me. It's a dicey narrative tightrope, since it spends so much time purposefully misleading and confusing the audience.

I thought the events were clear at the end, but the final revelations also made earlier scenes baffling in retrospect. The most notable is that intercutting exorcism sequence, which uses juxtaposition to suggest causality, but is actually a huge misdirect. It made no sense to me afterwards, and I had to go online to learn about jangseungs (the Judeo-Christian references I could follow, obviously, but the more regional Eastern stuff went right over my head). Then I was like, okay, now I think I get it.

That can be frustrating, of course, but I like what Na is able to achieve. He creates a suspended state of doubt that can be exciting and keeps you guessing (watching the protagonist struggle with his decisions at the end was so gripping, as I said, because as a viewer I really had no clue what he should do or who he should trust). The scope of the plot is essential, too, because it provides Na the canvas to explore a variety of themes and layer them together in a compelling way ("evil" in this film is opportunistic, and I love that Na made a movie about faith that is also about racism and etc.)

The Wailing is basically "God works in mysterious ways" rendered as a horror film and it's incredible.