For its tenth anniversary, Matt Konopka looks back at ‘The Wailing’ and what makes it a terrifying South Korean horror film yet to be matched
Speaking as someone who has been married for several years, there are few terrors as great as that of feeling that you’re incapable of protecting a loved one. I try not to think about it too often. Why would I want to? But the worry persists anyway. That fear that there are forces so much larger than me, not all of them good. The knowing that, when push came to shove, I might be powerless to do a damn thing in the face of death. Occasionally, I’ll see my wife smile, catch the glint of sunlight on her hair, and I’ll feel terrified at the thought that she could be snatched away in an instant…and that I wouldn’t be strong enough to save her. That terror is just one of the many horrors that Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing pulls out of the darkness, and why the film remains an unmatched piece of South Korean horror a decade later.
Ten years ago this May, the filmmaker released his third feature on unsuspecting audiences who had no idea what sort of dread-choked fiend they were about to lay eyes on. Hong-jin’s previous work had been dark, sure, dealing with murder and death, but they hadn’t delved into the black pits of the most sinister supernatural forces. The Wailing does take us there, though. And unlike most other horror movies, it doesn’t pull us back out at the end. It leaves us down there to rot. To scream and to cry and yes, even do a little wailing, much like the film itself has continued to shriek across time.
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
In The Wailing, we meet policeman Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won). He’s woken to a call early in the morning that there’s been a murder. When he arrives at the scene, he discovers a brutal crime. Multiple bodies. Blood everywhere. And the killer sitting on the porch, out of his mind and covered in strange blisters. Rumor has it that a sort of evil has followed a mysterious Japanese man () to town. More deaths occur. More horror. And soon, Jong-goo finds his own daughter, Hyo-jin (), possessed by a demon and overtaken by blistering. With time running out, Jong-goo sets his sights on the Japanese man, willing to do whatever it takes to save his daughter. But is he strong enough to do what he must when the time comes?
It’s that last part that sucks viewers into The Wailing and makes it instantly relatable. See, Jong-goo is not your average horror movie cop lead. Often, those characters are fearless. Gritty. Tough as nails. Ready to take on a Predator all alone in Los Angeles or go toe to toe with Satan on New Year’s Eve. But not Jong-goo. Not by a long shot. Jong-goo…he’s a simple man. He enjoys good food (he’s always eating early on). He loves his family. And he’s a bit of a coward. A guy with “balls the size of peas”, as his fellow cops say. After an encounter with a psychotic woman at a crime scene, he even shits himself, forcing his daughter to bring him a change of clothes in front of his superiors. He’s not the sort of guy we envision saving the day. Nor does he. Jong-goo’s a rational man, after all. He knows he’s not Superman.
If only Jong-goo’s rationality were as strong as his will to save Hyo-jin.
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
When we first meet Jong-goo, he’s not one to fall too easily into superstition. Despite the rather unusual murder case, he chalks it up to drugs. Never mind the blisters. Or the ritualistic charms left at the scene. Or the stories of the Japanese man roaming the woods naked, red-eyed, and feasting on the carcass of a dead deer. No. There must be some science-backed reason for it all. Jong-goo’s partner, Oh Sung-bok (Son Kang-kuk), doesn’t think so, though. He’s an immediate believer in the eerie stories about the Japanese man. But not Jong-goo. Not at first.
Like the very best possession films, The Wailing gets into the mud with the conflict between superstition and science. At one point, after taking Hyo-jin to the hospital, Jong-goo becomes certain that other forces are at work. He’s asked, “How can you be sure without seeing for yourself?” We, the audience, know something is afoot, but Jong-goo doesn’t. How could he possibly know if it’s an evil that has taken over his daughter or a severe illness? He can’t. None of us can. That’s what’s terrifying. That’s what sucks the blood from our bodies as we lie there at night, afraid. We’re just a small speck in the greater scheme of things. We don’t have all the answers. And, as Hyo-jin so violently screams at her father, “You don’t even know what’s important.”
There’s only a handful of things a child could say to a parent that are worse than that. A few go unsaid yet are very much implied throughout The Wailing. Namely, Jong-goo’s belief that his daughter has been sexually abused by the Japanese man. That’s her shoe that they find at the altar the man has set up in his home. There’s the story of him raping a woman. And, of course, the blistering rash that Jong-goo discovers at night while Hyo-jin sleeps in a disturbing scene riddled with a dread you can’t easily shake. All pointing to something so terrible, it’d fill any father with rage. Beginning to end, all Jong-goo’s worst fears for his family come to fruition. One painful, gutting, horrific occurrence after another.
Why? Well, that’s the kicker of The Wailing, isn’t it?
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
In a twist on that old folk tale of a person knocking at the door and denied shelter, only to reveal themselves as a witch who curses the inhabitants for their lack of humanity, Hong-jin incorporates a similar parable. During an emotionally fraught ending, Jong-goo discovers from a mysterious woman (Chun Woo-hee) that the Japanese man is a demon, and the shaman (Hwang Jung-min) hired to help his daughter is in league with it. Jong-goo needs only to wait for the woman’s trap to be set to rid themselves of the entity once and for all. But, realizing the woman is a ghost, Jong-goo hurries to his daughter, ruining the trap and leading to the death of his family at the hands of Hyo-jin. Jong-hoo’s screams, coupled with the brutal murder of his deceased loved ones…it’s enough to rip your soul right from your body.
Along with themes of spirituality and belief, The Wailing twists the narrative around the long-standing feud between Japan and South Korea. Put simply, the conflict stems from Japan’s previous colonial rule of the country. Many South Korean horror films have tapped into the ghosts left behind by that era, such as the recent (and excellent) Exhuma. Yet in Hong-jin’s film, though the Japanese man is, in fact, a demon, the filmmaker approaches him from a somewhat sympathetic angle. We see him suffer at the hands of Jong-goo and an angry mob that he brings to the man’s home, still believing him to be human.
In a shocking twist, it turns out that the demon was punishing Jong-goo for something he knew he’d do all along: attempt to kill the Japanese man without any certifiable proof that he had done anything wrong. Jong-goo loses his belief in science and falls down the rabbit hole of rumor, allowing himself to become convinced that the Japanese man is evil. He and the others allow themselves to be consumed by spiritual belief, racism towards the man clouding their minds and turning him into a scapegoat for a problem they don’t know how to deal with. One shot features a sickle with a rosemary wrapped around it, and boy, if that doesn’t highlight the film’s theme of violence backed by superstition in a single image. In the end, that dismantling of reason in the place of hate dooms Jong-goo…a lesson many in the world still haven’t learned.
Over the last twenty years or so, there have been numerous South Korean horror films that captured the imagination of audiences everywhere. The giant monster movie with a giant heart, Host. One of the more intense zombie films ever made, Train to Busan. The relentlessly terrifying Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. And a personal favorite, the utterly brilliant A Tale of Two Sisters. But when it comes to that primal, deep-seated terror that lies within us, nestled in some dark place we try to forget, The Wailing outdoes them all. Scary, dread-choked, and outright devastating, it’s a film that reminds us just how small and vulnerable we are in this big, frightening world.
A film that rips into the terrors of fatherhood, cowardice, hatred and the ugly things humans do to one another when they’re afraid, The Wailing is still striking fear into the hearts of audiences ten years later as one of the most terrifying films to ever scream out of South Korea.
