The Wailing is a Korean horror masterpiece that you can’t prepare for

In the pantheon of Korean obsession horror media stands director Na Hong-jin’s 2016 film The wailing (Goksung) has an uncanny kinship with another sleepy entry in the genre. Sure, it has the usual features: a doe-eyed hero, a cynical supporting character who won’t be around for long, a wise shaman, some sort of demon, and the unfortunate family member that the protagonist is supposed to save from spiritual ruin. But like Jang Jae-hyun’s 2024 film Exhuma, The Lamentation takes these familiar hallmarks and injects them with genuine postcolonial trauma – Japan as the

The setting of The complains, like any good horror film worth its salt, is a quiet, remote country town where everyone knows everyone. Here, an incompetent and pleasantly lazy police officer named Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won), whom even his colleagues groan about working with, suddenly becomes important at work when a mysterious plague strikes the isolated South Korean village. All everyone knows is that whatever disease has afflicted the humans has caused them to go on violent rampages, 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 use the height of his deductive powers – however random and luckless – to solve the strange incident in their village involving his daughter. And all signs point to the eerie arrival of a Japanese foreigner named “Japanese Man” (played by Jun Kunimura) in their village. But his presence, as sinister as it may be, is just the tip of the iceberg of suspects behind the quiet town’s occult conspiracy.

When all the horrors storm Jong-goo’s doorstep, the mystique of The wailingThe director’s nested mystery puppets intertwine, allowing his paranoia to disappear from the screen and into the viewer’s consciousness. Along the way, The wailing doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares to sell the horror sensorium bubbling to the surface. Instead, it persists. It depends on shots. It allows fear to bloom in the distance as something terrible moves just far enough away to recognize you and then comes towards you at its own pace. It’s as apt a metaphor as any The wailingThe measured pace. It creates fear not through noise but through presence. And that’s it Really good at it.

In the eye of the storm is Jong-goo – the bumbling cop at the center of it all – who, along with the audience, knows he’s on the right track, presenting the case not as a gaggle of jaded drug users, but as something that goes beyond a mountainous collection of empirical evidence. It doesn’t do him any favors that he triggers a random nightmare about the Japanese man, making his “man who cried wolf” case all the more dangerous considering his wanton prejudice against the stranger, which negatively impacts the credibility of his over-the-top interrogations.

There is something in all of this Shogun-How Discord over language. Jong-goo repeatedly hurls insults at the Japanese man he is 99 percent sure is behind everything – a decision that is entirely his own, even if his fellow officers hesitate to follow his marching orders. Meanwhile, a clearly overwhelmed priest acts as a translator between Joon-goo – who treats recurring nightmares as evidence – and the Japanese man, who is visibly exhausted because his admittedly cult-like loneliness is being disturbed. The language barrier becomes another source of paranoia, another veil between truth and assumption. The wailing enjoys playing with themes and motifs.

The film owes its menacing atmosphere to the collective power of its actors: Kunimura as the enigmatic outsider, Chun Woo-hee as the eerie “Mystery Woman” and Hwang Jung-min as the sleazy shaman whose rituals further thwart the chaos. Their performances are a boon to the film’s winsome, dizzying paranoia. The audience is right there with Jong-goo, like Peter Parker No way homeHis spider-sense goes haywire in a spinning room full of people smiling in his face, probably wishing him harm. It’s the kind of paranoia-driven horror where the danger is staring you right in the face or helping you find keys even though they’re the ones who hid them.

It is this friction between certainty and doubt, prejudice and paranoia that matters The wailing Such a compelling entry into the obsession horror canon. It juggles so many spinning plates that don’t seem to fit together: part crime drama, part shamanistic fever dream. And yet it does. Neatly and devastatingly.

Its cinematography is remarkable. Each image gives off the impression that all of its eerie, beautiful, and unhinged images are left behind on the screen. All in an effort to create a terror that wears an asymmetrical face, slowly simmering in fear and contrasting with the oppressive, calm serenity of the land, where danger could lurk among the hills or in the disheveled homes of people you once felt safe around.

The wailing is not “heightened horror” or “cultural horror” in the way fans often refer to films that avoid jump scares or dabble in uncomfortable politics. It’s a mysterious third thing that has become new: authenticity. Hong-jin’s 2016 film unflinchingly examines how prejudice, ego, and social status can cloud judgment—especially when someone is expected to readily and repeatedly solve a mystery bigger than themselves. And even though Jong-goo is a scumbag, you somehow feel for him. Not because of racism, of course, but in his daughter’s eyes he is a hero. Not because he’s a good cop (he’s not), but because he’s her father. Father is God in the eyes of a child. And the fear of letting her down is so profound that it seeps through the screen and sinks into the viewer’s bones – even as the puppeteer silhouette of his daughter stands in the doorway like Death itself.

By the time the film reaches its Orpheus-like finale, many of its grotesque horrors have already sunk beneath the surface. What’s left is the pull; With “Jung-goo” a huge wave threatens to captivate the audience. And then it quietly leaves a feeling that echoes louder than any scream: Evil doesn’t have to be insidious. Sometimes it just puts out a bait without knowing what it’s catching and reels in whatever bites the line. Figuring out whether the evil is a perceived or real threat throws things into chaos for Jong-goo The wailing Such a gem of a horror film.

I’m not arrogant enough to claim I’ve completely unraveled The wailing-or Connectby the way – and their joint excavation of the post-colonial trauma between Japan and South Korea. But what remains is unmistakable: a theme that functions like a one-way mirror – one that is universal in its reflection and personal in its sharpness. The wailing picks at that scab and weaves concern and disorientation into something far more intimate. In all its chaos, it was not only a horror film, but also a deeply moving crime drama in disguise. It’s 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.

The wailing is streaming on Hulu.

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