{"id":393662,"date":"2025-11-21T02:52:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T02:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/393662\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T02:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T02:52:18","slug":"the-wailing-is-a-korean-horror-masterpiece-you-cant-brace-yourself-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/393662\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Wailing\u2019 Is a Korean Horror Masterpiece You Can’t Brace Yourself For"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the pantheon of Korean possession-horror media, director Na Hong-jin\u2019s 2016 film The Wailing<\/a> (Goksung) shares an uncanny kinship with another slept-on entry in the genre. Sure, it\u2019s got the usual fixings: a doe-eyed hero, a cynical side character not long for this world, a wise shaman, some sort of demon, and the unlucky family member the protagonist is tasked with saving from spiritual ruin. But like Jang Jae-hyun\u2019s 2024 film\u00a0Exhuma, The Wailing takes these familiar hallmarks and injects them with real postcolonial trauma\u2014Japan as the x-factor in its paranoia-soaked horror\u2014transforming it into one of the most haunting cinematic experiences, even if you are divorced from the cultural splash zone of its deep-seated dread and prejudice.<\/p>\n

The setting of The Wailing, like any good horror film worth its salt<\/a>, is a quiet, isolated countryside town where everyone knows everyone. Here, an inept and comfortably lazy cop, who even his colleagues groan about working with, named Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won), suddenly becomes important at work when a mysterious plague haunts the sequestered South Korean village. All anyone knows is that whatever ailment\u2019s been possessing people has caused them to go on a violent rampage, killing their loved ones and leaving them in a vegetative stupor. It\u2019s a case Jong-goo is ill-equipped to solve but is forced to tap into the height of his deductive prowess\u2014however accidental and hapless\u2014to solve the strange occurrence in their village when it claims his daughter. And all signs point to the uncanny arrival of a Japanese foreigner, called \u201cJapanese Man\u201d (played by Jun Kunimura), in their village. But his presence, however sinister, is only the tip of the iceberg of suspects behind the quiet town\u2019s occult conspiracy.<\/p>\n

When all the horrors come rushing to Jong-goo\u2019s doorstep, the mystique of The Wailing\u2019s nesting dolls of mysteries braid together, making his paranoia seep from the screen and enter the viewer\u2019s own consciousness. Along the way, The Wailing doesn\u2019t lean on cheap jump scares to sell that sensorium of horror bubbling to the surface. Instead, it lingers. It hangs on shots. It lets dread bloom in the distance as something awful contorts just far enough away to spot you, then moseys toward you at its own pace. It is as fitting a metaphor as any for The Wailing\u2018s measured pace. It builds dread not through noise, but through presence. And it\u2019s really good at it.<\/p>\n

At the eye of the storm is Jong-goo\u2014the bumbling policeman at the center of it all\u2014who, alongside viewers, knows he\u2019s on the right track, not handwaving the case as a string of strung-out drug users, but as something beyond a mountainous collection of empirical evidence. It doesn\u2019t do him any favors that he\u2019s going off a random nightmare of the Japanese man, making his man-who-cried-wolf case all the more perilous before you take into consideration his wanton prejudice against the stranger being bad for the believability of his over-the-top interrogations.<\/p>\n

Layered into all this is a Shogun-like<\/a> discord around language. Jong-goo repeatedly hurls slurs at the Japanese man, who he\u2019s 99 percent sure is behind everything\u2014a choice that\u2019s entirely his, even as his fellow officers hesitate to follow his marching orders. All the while, a priest, clearly in over his head, serves as the translator between Joon-goo\u2014who\u2019s treating recurring nightmares as evidence\u2014and the Japanese man, who\u2019s visibly exhausted by having his admittedly cultish solitude disturbed. The language barrier becomes another source of paranoia, another veil between truth and assumption. The Wailing delights in playing themes and motifs.<\/p>\n

The film owes its ominous atmosphere to the collective powers of its cast: Kunimura as the enigmatic outsider, Chun Woo-hee as the eerie \u201cMysterious Woman,\u201d and Hwang Jung-min as the smarmy shaman whose rituals throw another wrench into the chaos. Their performances are a boon to the film\u2019s winning, dizzying paranoia. Viewers are right there with Jong-goo, like Peter Parker in No Way Home, spider-sense going haywire in a revolving room full of people smiling to his face while, probably, wishing him ill. It\u2019s the kind of paranoia-fueled horror where danger might be staring you dead in the face or helping you look for keys, even though they\u2019re the ones who hid them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this friction between certainty and doubt, prejudice and paranoia, that makes The Wailing such an engrossing entry in the possession horror canon. It juggles so many spinning plates that don\u2019t seem to fit together: part crime drama, part shamanistic fever dream. And yet, it does. Neatly and devastatingly.<\/p>\n

Its cinematography is remarkable. Every frame emanates the air of leaving all of its eerie, beautiful, and unhinged imagery on screen. All in the effort of birthing a horror that wears an asymmetric face, slow-cooked in dread and juxtaposed against the oppressive quiet serenity of the countryside, where dangers could be lying in wait among the hills or inside the disheveled homes of people you once felt safe around.<\/p>\n

The Wailing isn\u2019t \u201celevated horror\u201d or \u201ccultural horror\u201d in the way fans often label films that avoid jump scares or dabble in uncomfortable politics. It\u2019s a mysterious third thing that\u2019s become novel: genuineness. Hong-jin\u2019s 2016 film unflinchingly explores how prejudice, ego, and social standing can cloud judgment\u2014especially when someone\u2019s expected to readily and repeatedly solve a mystery bigger than themselves. And somehow, despite Jong-goo being a scumbag, you empathize with him. Not for the racism, obviously, but he\u2019s a hero in his daughter\u2019s eyes. Not because he\u2019s a good cop (he\u2019s not), but because he\u2019s her dad. Father is God in the eyes of a child. And the fear of failing her is so visceral, it permeates through the screen and soaks in the viewers\u2019 bones\u2014even when his daughter\u2019s puppeteered silhouette stands in doorways like death itself.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"The<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"The<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t <\/p>\n

By the time the film crescendos into its Orpheus-esque finale, many of its grotesque horrors have already sunk beneath the surface. What\u2019s left is the undertow; a humongous wave threatens to pull viewers under with Jung-goo. And then, quietly, it leaves you with a feeling that echoes louder than any scream: Evil doesn\u2019t have to be insidious. Sometimes it just lays out bait, not knowing what it\u2019ll catch, reeling in whatever bites the line. Sussing out whether that evil is a perceived threat or a genuine one is where things get messy for Jong-goo, making The Wailing such a gem of a horror film.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not haughty enough to claim I\u2019ve fully unraveled The Wailing\u2014or Exhuma, for that matter\u2014and their shared excavation of postcolonial trauma between Japan and South Korea. But what lingers is unmistakable: a theme that functions like a one-way mirror\u2014one that\u2019s universal in its reflection, and personal in its sting. The Wailing picks at that scab, weaving apprehension and disorientation into something far more intimate. In all its chaos, it succeeded not just as horror but as a deeply affecting crime drama in disguise. It\u2019s a film that haunts you long after the credits roll, not because it screams, but because it speaks plainly. And what it says is terrifying.<\/p>\n

The Wailing is streaming on Hulu.<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the pantheon of Korean possession-horror media, director Na Hong-jin\u2019s 2016 film The Wailing (Goksung) shares an uncanny…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":393663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,54,53,186983,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-393662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-horror","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-the-wailing","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115585427354372679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}