The Wailing

What it is

The Wailing is a 2016 mystery horror film directed by Na Hong-jin. In a rural village wrapped in mountains and fog, a run of unexplained incidents begins, and the local policeman Jong-goo starts trying to work out what is behind them. Kwak Do-won plays Jong-goo and Hwang Jung-min plays the shaman Il-gwang, while Japanese actor Jun Kunimura plays a stranger who has settled near the village and Chun Woo-hee plays a woman whose identity is hard to pin down. It is Na's third feature as director, after The Chaser and The Yellow Sea.

Just the starting point

The film opens as villagers are hurt and killed in ways nobody can explain. Rumours spread about the stranger living up in the hills, and Jong-goo, half sceptical, finds himself drawn further into them. That is the setup; everything after is best discovered while watching. The film is built so that viewers have to decide for themselves what is true, and the less you know going in, the stronger the tension.

An ordinary man at the centre

Jong-goo is no gifted investigator. He is a timid, rather clumsy country cop, and early on his bumbling even gets laughs. That ordinariness puts the audience at his eye level. With no solid clues and no one he can fully trust, he leans on rumour and gut feeling, and his unease becomes ours. This is not a story where a hero solves the case; it is a story about watching the ground for any judgement fall away.

How the dread is built

The Wailing relies less on sudden scares than on an atmosphere that slowly tightens. Rain that will not stop, thick fog and empty mountain roads set a heavy mood from the start. Everyday chatter in local dialect and small family moments are woven in, which makes the sense of normal life coming apart all the sharper.

• Weather and landscape set the emotional tone first
• Ordinary humour is followed directly by ominous scenes
• Glances and rumours keep shifting where suspicion points
• Contrast between sound and silence ratchets up tension

Belief and suspicion

The question running through the film is what to believe. Villagers suspect one another based on what they have heard and seen, and that suspicion turns into action before anything is confirmed. Religious symbols and shamanic rituals both appear, but the film does not hold up either as the answer; it shows people searching for something to hold on to when they are afraid. How the village comes to look at an outsider is also worth thinking about.

A film read in many ways

The Wailing is often discussed as a film people interpret differently. It deliberately leaves gaps so that the identities of its characters and the meaning of events can be read in more than one way. Rather than adopting one reading as the correct one, it is more rewarding to recall what each scene reveals and what it withholds, and to build your own interpretation. Save other people's theories for after you have seen it.

What to watch for the first time

The film runs long, so it is best watched in one sitting when you can give it full attention. Keeping a few things in mind makes its design easier to see. Do not be fooled by the light mood early on; the weight shifts a great deal as it goes. On a second viewing, scenes you passed over the first time can read quite differently.

• What Jong-goo relies on each time he changes his mind
• How the same places look by day and by night
• How much you are told when each character first appears
• The shift in mood right after a funny moment

Worth knowing before watching

There are gruesome scenes and disturbing images, so check the age rating before watching. If horror or ritual scenes affect you strongly, watching with someone else or during the day may help. The title and setting come from a real place name, but the story is fiction and does not depict the actual area or the people who live there. The shamanic rituals on screen are also dramatised, and should not be taken as faithful records of real beliefs or practices.