The Wailing

The Wailing (2016) opens with a run of killings in a small mountain village. People are murdering their own families, and every killer has the same rash. A hapless local policeman starts looking into it. A Japanese stranger has recently come to live in the village, and suspicion goes straight to him. That suspicion is the actual subject. Who is evil, which power means well, whom should anyone believe. Na Hong-jin keeps withholding information, and even after the film ends it remains arguable which entity was the malign one. The uncertainty is not an accident, it is the structure. It was shot in Gokseong, the real town that gives the film its Korean title. Kunimura Jun plays the Japanese stranger, and casting a Japanese actor in that part carries weight of its own, because the suspicion has a history behind it. Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min and Chun Woo-hee complete it. Na Hong-jin had previously made The Chaser and The Yellow Sea. The film cost eight million dollars and grossed 51.3 million worldwide, winning Best Director at the Blue Dragon Awards and Best Film at the Baeksang Arts Awards. It runs 156 minutes. Good for: horror that builds slowly, religious and shamanic ritual, and films that leave the reading to you. Less good for: it is 156 minutes and the dread accumulates for a long time. The violence and the danger to a child are heavy. The refusal to resolve is not merely unsatisfying for some viewers, it is maddening.