Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

little_wackie This is another fantastic horror movie from South Korean. Totally creepy! This movie takes place in a small town/village, when a murder takes place. A relative kills his family. Is the murderer sick, on drugs, or something more sinister? Is this a version of voodoo? There are so many questions and as you watch the film, so many weird things are going on. You'll never guess the end......and I'm not telling! This movie gave me chills! Definitely worth your time. This movie is in Korean, but you get past the subtitles quickly once you get into the movie, which doesn't take long.

Páiric O'Corráin The Wailing: South Korean Horror involving Demons, a Shaman, strange infections, murders and perhaps Zombies; certainly a lot of biting going on. A Japanese stranger (Jun Kunimura) is living in a shack in the woods in rural South Korea, people say that he eats deer alive and infects people, perhaps both physically and mentally. Is he some sort of Demon? There is also a strange young woman (Chun Woo-hee), is she in fact the source of the area's ills?Villagers begin to act strangely, start murder each other gruesomely, run around biting people, commit arson. A local police sergeant (Kwak Do-won) investigates and puts his own family at risk. His daughter (Kim Hwan-hee) may be possessed or controlled by a Demon. He is persuaded to call in a Shaman (Hwang Jung-min) to perform an exorcism but the Shaman realises that this in itself won't solve the problem, a stronger ritual will be required to finally rid the village of the Demon.Quite a violent film with several brutal murders committed both on and off stage. Also elements of psychological terror are well used throughout the film, in particular the primeval panic evoked by the forest. The ritual itself is explained and illustrated in detail, both the animal sacrifices during it and the cleansing rites necessary beforehand, bringing to mind the film A Dark Song. This is South Korean Folk Horror.Directed and written by Na Hong-jin this is a demanding film which you will not easily put out of your mind. At 156 minutes however it does drag in places and would have benefited from 20 minutes being judiciously cut from the running time. 8.5/10. On Netflix.

julesfdelorme The Wailing (Gok-seung) I've had a lot of time on my hands of late. Stuck in bed mostly, I've been watching a lot of TV and a lot of movies. Some of it good. Some of it bad. And a bit of it surprising. The Korean film Gok-seung, The Wailing, was one of those surprising things for me. It's one of those types of movies that I think we should be talking about a lot more than we generally do. It's so easy to talk about the big budget main stream films. So many of us, though, tend to overlook the smaller budget films, particularly from markets that we don't pay very much attention to when it comes to movies. Some Japanese films have captured mainstream attention, from the wonderful Akira Kurosawa films of the past, shlocky monster movies like Godzilla, Manga, Anime and Animation works, and horror movies like The Ring. Too many of those movies got badly remade by Hollywood, though The Magnificent Seven, For a Few Dollars More and even Star Wars managed to take Kurosawa's work and make pretty good movies out of them. This has also been true of some Northern European films and television series, particularly Sweden, though they too have a long history of "art film" prestige, and an unfortunate history of bad or just less powerful Hollywood remakes. But smaller, lesser known markets, like Korea, or Iran and so many other countries with burgeoning film industries, too often get overlooked. And movies that do not qualify as "art film" get even more overlooked, probably because they do not appeal to our inner snobs and do not make for good "Look how smart and cultured I am." types of references. South Korea has in fact been making its own interesting horror and science fiction films for a while now. This undoubtedly has a similar source of inspiration as the American science fiction films and Japanese monster movies of the 50s and 60s: an intimate relationship and natural paranoia about the possibility of very real annihilation, of a hidden enemy that might very well actually exist, in this case due to the proximity to the unstable North Korean government. This has led to a very similar type of undertone that made movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing or Godzilla much better than they should have been. Gok-seung, The Wailing is a great example of just this type of movie. On the surface it starts out seeming like another zombie/possession movie, though with a surprising mix of comic characterization mixed in. The lead character is an overweight, mildly incompetent, and not at all heroic cop in a small mountain village where some odd, possibly supernatural deaths take place. Do-won Kwak, as Jong-goo is not exactly what you would picture as a leading man. But his pock marked fleshy face is both wonderfully expressive when he needs it to be and a blank almost mindless mask at other times, calling to mind the wonderful Japanese/Korean actor and director Takeshi Kitano, particularly in the way that he relates to the world around him and his fellow human beings. Except for his daughter Hyo-jin, played wonderfully by Hwan-hee Kim. She is the polar opposite of her father. She is sweet, full of life and of a surprising level of mature honesty and wisdom. Jong-goo clearly adores his daughter. When he is in her presence he melts. He emanates a deep uncynical fatherly love. He is a different human being when he is with her. So we know of course that Hyo-jin will play a major role, but we don't exactly how, and we definitely do not know how interesting the course that the movie will take, because at first it seems like such an obvious genre film. It's not. Even when the story begins to unfold, and we think we know what the movie is about, it manages to surprise. And like those great movies of the 50s and 60s, Gok-seung has a surprisingly deep undertow, reflecting those American science fiction films in the way that the characters must struggle with the question of how exactly we can tell the difference between good and evil. It's also refreshing to see characters freak out when faced with the weird and the supernatural. If we're being completely honest about of it, how many of us would end up squealing and curled up in a ball if we were actually faced with flesh eating ghouls or demons? It's nice for once, and often very funny, to watch people actually do that. The Wailing could easily pass as just a better than average horror movie, and can easily be appreciated as nothing more than that. It's funny. It's entertaining. It's pretty creepy at times. And it's pretty shlocky at other times. But The Wailing, much like its main characters, is also far smarter than it seems to be. So, watch it if you like horror movies, if you like comedy, or if you just like to be entertained. But maybe, when you're done just enjoying Gok-seung, The Wailing, take a brief moment to appreciate how much better a film it was than it seemed to be. You can find it on Netflix. Maybe it's not for everyone out there. But I think more of you are going to like it than you might first think. You might even be able to brag to your friends a bit that you've found a film that they didn't know anything about. They may not be as impressed as they might be if you had watched a Kurosawa or Bergman film. But that's okay. Art isn't always that much fun. But not everything has to be Art to be very very good. The Wailing isn't Art. Not by a long shot. But it is very good. And it's fun. We should be talking more about movies like Gok-seung, The Wailing. And we should be far less ashamed of having fun. Because sometimes fun can be smart too.

Turfseer Why do critics often overrate foreign films? Could it be that that there are no frames of reference to effect able comparisons? Such is the case with Na Hong-jin's, The Wailing, a rather dopey "horror thriller" set in a rural area of South Korea. If you must see this inane tale, then see it for the nifty cinematography which features plush landscapes of the South Korean countryside.The protagonist here is Jong-goo, a police officer, who dotes on his young daughter, Hyo-jin. One is struck immediately by the crude talk of the local constabulary which Jong-goo belongs, having attained the rank of sergeant. The local police have now been entrusted with investigating a series of deaths due to what initially is believed to be some kind of gruesome infectious disease, leaving bubonic plague-like splotches on the skin, leading to murders committed by sole family members.A mysterious woman informs Jong-goo about an elderly Japanese man, living out in the sticks, who might be a person of interest. A local hunter claims he saw the man almost naked, with glowing red eyes, eating a deer. Jong-goo, along with another officer, perform what appears to be a warrant-less search on the stranger's house while he is away and the partner finds pictures of the infected and murdered victims inside the Japanese man's home (he's so shocked that he doesn't he even tell Jong-goo).No need to go into great detail about what happens next. Suffice it to say that when Hyo-jin becomes infected, Jong- goo attempts to hunt the Japanese man down after putting a posse together including a young Japanese-speaking deacon. They aren't successful in capturing the alleged "demon," and then Jong-goo's mother- in-law recommends employing Il-gwang, a local shaman, who subsequently performs a bizarre ritual designed to remove the spirits inhabiting Hyo- jin's body.Jong-goo finally is forced to play "will the real demon please stand up," and is unable to discern whether the mysterious woman he encountered earlier is being truthful when she denies being the demon and continuing to point the finger at the "Jap" (antipathy toward the Japanese still apparently runs high even among modern day South Koreans). The deacon however, ends up confronting the old man who reveals himself to be the actual demon.The ending is decidedly not happy at all when Jong-goo returns home and finds his wife and mother-in-law slaughtered by his now possessed daughter. There is supposed to be some kind of twist when we discover that Il-gwang might be part of the demon club, after we see him returning to his car, unintentionally dropping a box containing photos of the other victims of those possessed.The Wailing disappoints for two major reasons. First there's the protagonist Jong-goo, played by Do-won Kwak. I don't think I've ever seen a police officer as wimpy as the one played by Kwak. The demon appears to wreak havoc upon his psyche and he's end up a blubbering mess —a shell of a man—at film's end. Where was Bruce Willis when you needed him?Second and more important, Na Hong-jin's monster isn't one bit scary or original. All the flesh eating and glowing eyes are things we've seen many times before in these type of films. The only people who end up wailing are those who pay tickets for this paltry and lugubrious entry in the pantheon of shlock (not shock) infested entertainment.