The Wailing (2016) Skin-Crawling Classical Horror, Korean Style (Review)

Once upon a time horror meant something. It was more of a genre than the series of boxes that need to be ticked to provoke an emotional reaction like it is now. The words “it’s terrible, wasn’t even scary”, have become an epitaph of its downfall. The decline of narrative went hand in hand with the rising prominence of gore and jump scares. Now, in 2016, the classic idea of a horror film is a relic of the past, with titles like Cat People or the Omen standing as icons to its golden age. Returning Korean filmmaker, Na Hong-Jin (The Chaser & The Yellow Sea) presents the perfect marriage of storytelling whilst also being scary for his new film The Wailing. 

Jong-Goo (Do Won Kwak) is the image of a portly country bumpkin police officer, as the film opens much of it has a comic tone with him turning up late to a murder scene because a neighbour refuses to say no, as “dead people can wait, food cannot”. He squeals as a survivor attacks him at a later murder scene and his boss chastises him for turning up late, as he knows Jong-Goo was sleeping. The one place that he cannot be criticised, however, is his ability as a Father with that being the crux of his character throughout, demonstrating that he will do absolutely anything for his daughter. As suggested earlier, his village is subject to a series of brutal murders and the only thing that has changed since these events started is the arrival of a Japanese man (Jun Kunimura). Being an insular community, stories and theories about the stranger become commonplace and thus we ask the big question–who is that man and does he have any role to play in the hand of death that clutches this small town?

One of the critiques of the film has been its length with the wailing clocking in around the 2 and half-hour mark. However, criticising the over-bloated time or indeed the genre flipping would be as redundant as picking on Bollywood films for having so many songs–this is just what they are. That may be true, all the same, not a single second of those 156 minutes is wasted and while slow, you could never accuse the film of dragging its feet. Like all the best mysteries, the director/writer slowly drip-feeds information about what is going on and never once caved in on the demand for exposition. Even at the end, he presents facts from different perspectives but never once weaves them together for easy answers – Na Hong-jin has always respected his audience.

That drip-feed sits side by side with spectacular characterization and direction, with the core five roles all brilliantly performed. Whether it’s the shaman (Hwang Jung-Min), who is instrumental in giving life to the horror thanks to some of the most beautifully shot and contrary exorcism scenes. Using folk dance and drums to expel evil, he leads from the front in one of the best scenes of the year. Or the central duo of Jong-Goo and his daughter Hyo-Jin. From the simple and tender connection they share to the harsher edges of the film, they provide the heart to an otherwise bleak film. The young actress, in particular, Kim Hwan-hee (Hyo-Jin), puts in a stellar performance that will see the director challenge Koreeda Hirokazu as the king of directing children. Furthermore, he has the knack of digging beneath the surface of Korean superstars to find the best actors for every conceivable role.

At the top of the pyramid is Kunimura’s stranger. He barely says a word throughout the whole film yet in spite of this we always understand his character beyond his symbolic role as both an unwitting antagonist and a subtext. With the probing expression he wears on his face, this is a man who has something to hide and that in combination with the graphic violence sweeping the village, his very presence provokes fear. Even so, he simultaneously evokes pity as an extreme outsider. This is a man with 164 acting credits to his name and supporting roles in countless iconic films. Here, with the stranger, he plays second fiddle to no one. The connotations weaved into his role tell of a country stuck in the mire between modernization and the omnipotence of tradition and history, with that in mind it’s no wonder that the film narrows its gaze upon him and he turns an idea into one of the most potent paranoid films in years.

To return to the opening hypothesis sees the wailing as anti-horror. There may be conduits for the genre’s aspirations to flow through and there may also be gore and a stray zombie–of all things, but at the very core of the film is evil. It is a concept and to make a concept as abstract as evil scary is a rare feat; you have to look at films like the Exorcist, Angel Heart or the Omen to see this in action. Na Hong-Jin joins that illustrious company through the family unit. He corrupts it, turning familiarly into absolute contempt and bloody murder. Families are a safe zone and to see that idea wrenched upon like a torture rack is wholly terrifying. Twin this with that winning performance from Jun Kunimura and the ratchet upon your nerves is tightened to breaking point.

Two perfect companions to Na Hong-Jin’s masterwork are Carol Morley’s The Falling and William Friedkin’s Exorcist. The realist fantasy aspects of Friedkin’s film will be instantly apparent, but Morley’s film is an interesting comparison. Her film turned hysteria into an epidemic, and beneath all the trimmings, that is exactly what the wailing is too. In its native Korea, the film goes by the much more generic name of Goksung (or, the name of the village), there’s a significance to that. We see things from Jong-Goo’s perspective, but the influence of evil infiltrates the entire village giving birth to mass hysteria; the film is a study of what happens to people when fear takes over. 

The Korean New Wave has been one of the greatest beats of post-2000 cinema, unfortunately, it was too focused on the big three of Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-Woon and Bong Joon-Ho and with them moving into the wider film community its embers faded. The same thing happened to Hong Kong, which had an equally incendiary industry during the 80s and 90s. Korea wasn’t going to settle for that, though, in the past few years, a new wider community of directors are birthing a second wave through which they are crafting some of the best things in modern cinema with the Wailing serving as one of the crowning achievements.

Thanks for reading our review of The Wailing

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