This is a part of an ongoing project in which I watch one movie from a different country every week. 

RUNNING TIME: 156 Minutes (Don’t let the length discourage you, this movie is totally worth it.)

DIRECTOR: Hong-jin Na

WRITTEN BY: Hong-jin Na

STARING:
Do-won Kwak
Jung-min Hwang
Woo-hee Chun
Hwan-hee Kim

WHERE CAN YOU FIND IT? I watched it on Netflix Instant. It’s also available on Amazon Video to rent for $3.99 or to buy for $7.99.

PLOT:  A stranger arrives in a small South Korean village. Soon afterward, a mysterious sickness spreads through the community. The plague begins with a rash, but the infected are soon driven to insanity and commit sickening acts of violence. When a policeman (Do-won Kwak) discovers a rash on his daughter’s skin, he turns to a materialistic shaman for help.

MEMORABLE MOMENT: The Shaman’s ritual has to take the cake. It involves dancing, animal sacrifice, hammering nails into a totem and spitting blood onto a sword. The sequence is intercut with images of the mysterious stranger performing insidious rituals in his remote cabin.

FROM IMDB:

• For the exorcism (described above), actor Jung-min Hwang filmed the entire scene in one fifteen minute take.
• According to director Hong-jin Na, this movie’s themes and rituals are based on folk religions from Korea and Nepal, as well as the Catholic faith.
• Hwan-hee Kim who played Hyo-jin (Jong-goo’s daughter) practiced modern dance for six months to perform scenes of her being possessed.

Because The Wailing is such a long movie and because I have such a busy schedule (don’t we all) I watched the first third of the film and then turned it off for dinner. From what I saw, I’d come to the conclusion I was watching a comedic horror film, something along the lines of Evil Dead 2 or a less self-aware Cabin in the Woods.  Jong-goo (Do-won Kwak) plays a painfully inept overweight cop who panics under the slightest provocation.  Sure there were bloody deaths and an ominous tone of foreboding but I returned to The Wailing expecting more horror/comedy hijinx.

Only to discover that that there is NOTHING funny about that final 2/3’s of the movie.

I won’t give away any spoilers here (last week was an exception) but let’s just say things get dark and then darker and then super dark and then we reach the final half hour of the movie.  The inept police officer is no longer the man he was during the first forty-five minutes. By the climax I didn’t feel like I was watching the same film anymore.

Had this been your typical comedic horror movie the two genres would have played off one another for most of the running time.  The violence and gore would build the tension until the bumbling cop did something ridiculous, giving the audience a temporary comedic release. Then the tension would build again and this pattern would continue until the climax. We enjoy these movies because not only do we “survive” the fear, we get to laugh at it.

But the final hour and forty-five minutes of The Wailing barely has a speck of comedy. All lighter moments are nearly buried under dark elements. So why even give us the over-the-top comedy at all in the beginning? Why not just make Jong-goo a typical police officer? The filmmakers wouldn’t have had too change much to make The Wailing a 100% straight horror film.

In a way, I already answered my question. Had Jong-goo been a “typical” police officer he wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable.  Many cops in horror films may be corrupt, but they at least know how to act at a crime scene. Jon-goo falls in the mud when attacked by an elderly woman, a moment that sticks with the audience.

Even more importantly, his humble beginnings enhance the character’s journey. By the end of the first hour his actions are not the actions of the clumsy goof we started out with. Had we met him as a serious character his dark journey would not have been nearly as significant.

But there are even deeper reasons for the early comedic moments. The Wailing possesses a strong sense of loss. Not only do several people die but the family and community also come undone (not really a spoiler, this is a horror movie after all). It’s not as though Jong-goo’s family is straight out of a 1950’s sitcom, but the first forty-five minutes has light moments that are dashed away later in the film, amplifying this sense of loss. The audience spends the first portion of the film with the bumbling police officer and his inquisitive daughter only to see them (very close to literally) dragged through hell.  The sense of loss we feel after the laughs end would not have been there had Jong-goo started off as an effective officer of the law.