The Wailing

I need to start with this, because it was defiantly my highlight. I’ve never seen a death-hex ritual before but boy was I getting in the groove. I would happily sit amongst this clapping away, especially watching Il-gwang straddle his jangseung before he knocks in a few stakes here and there. I mean terrible for Hyo-Jin, of course her pain and misery caused a bit of sorrow in my dark heart whilst I bopped my head to the rhythm of the drums but still cracking scene, very entertaining.

I’m all for horror movies and I understand that horror can come in many forms, but for me, it’s just not horrific enough. I’m just a bit morbid really in my thinking, but saying that, I appreciated the film never less. It had me curious and it had me say ‘oouuu’ a few times. It also had me giggle a few times, unsure if that’s just my strange sense of humour or if its widely shared humour.

Not sure how short I can keep the plot but here we go folks. We start with a cop named Jong-goo who starts to investigate the local homicides in his village. Rumours start to spread that the farmer husband had taken toxic mushrooms and made him lose his shit. That wasn’t the case though and more deaths started happening in the village.

Jong-goo hears stories about this Japanese fisherman that arrived but isn’t really convinced by what he’s hearing, thinking there must be another explanation.

Whilst at one of the murder scenes, a burnt down house, he meets a mysterious lady in white, who starts throwing rocks towards him. He originally thinks she’s a witness and then she vanishes whilst he has a chin wag on the phone to his partner.

He then experiences what he thought was another one of his nightmares and soon after his daughter Hyo-Jin becomes unwell, she starts acting crazy and gets this rash just like some of the others who had perished.

Jong-goo starts thinking these stories about this Japanese man are true so he goes on a mission to find this man and save his daughter.

Jong-goo goes a bit cray cray on his second visit to the Japanese fella and as a dog lover, this scene was definitely horrifying.

So after giving his aggressive warning, he goes back home to which his mother insists on getting a shaman priest. The shaman Il-gwang arrives and first tries an exorcism with the girl outside and then he tries to perform that epic ritual which unfortunately gets stopped.

Oh and also whilst he’s doing his ritual, the Japanese fella is also doing some ritual of his own.

The daughter gets left in some messed up state and taken to hospital. Jong-goo devastated at his daughter’s condition gets some of his buddies to go put an end to the Japanese fella.

Lots of fun and games involved at this point...

We think all is done and dusted, the daughter returns to normal and goes back home.

Oh but no no no, it’s all systems go now.

The woman in white returns, the shaman is trying to tell Jong-goo he was wrong and it’s the woman in white who is the ghost and he must go home to his daughter. The daughters not there though so Jong-goo goes searching.

He finds the woman in white and she tells him shes put her own trap at the front of the house, telling Jong-goo not to go back or else they all die.

Whilst this is happening the deacon is with the Japanese fella, and well, shits occurring and I won’t spoil it. Jong-goo ignores the white woman and goes back home. Hell has been unleashed and the woman in white is left upset and finally the Shaman arrives to take some photographs to add the the collection that was apparently ‘burnt’ by the Japanese fella.

There is a deleted ending which is quite interesting to view, I feel that would have put a better finish to the film.

2 hours and 36 minutes have gone and I would say it’s definitely an interesting movie to watch but I’m unsure on how it got the rating it did.

It’s definitely not like traditional American horror movies with a happy ending with all evil defeated and all that jazz. It almost leaves you wondering, well what the hell just happened? Who do I trust and who don’t i? Was the ending right for a film of such a meaty length? Actually now I come to think about it, I have so many questions 🤔

So I think I’ll take a hot shower, tuck myself into bed and de-stress myself from thinking so many pointless questions and remember it’s a film about a demon and the demon won.

(pretty much how my face looked at the end of the movie)

3.5 sacrificial chickens out of 5.