The Wailing (Gokseong)
A cinematic cacophony of cryptic complexity
Directed by Na Hong-jin
South Korea, 2016
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This week’s feature film by Na Hong-jin is billed as a horror film, but while The Wailing has plenty of horror, it is so much more than that. It is yet another example of how South Korean filmmakers have been at the top of their game in recent years, with an ability to combine broad comedy and hyperbolic violence, but with a cinema still vital with nuance – and importantly, ambiguity. It leaves much Anglophone product standing. That ambiguity is reflected in the film’s Korean title: Gokseong is the rural village where the film is set but the Chinese characters on the film poster translate as ‘the sound of weeping’.
The tale begins with what seems like a clichéd premise: a small-town policeman in a remote, isolated hamlet in South Korea arrives, late, at the scene of a grisly, multiple murder. The victims are the family of a ginseng farmer, who now sits in a catatonic state with a florid rash and boils all over his face. Is the farmer responsible? A motive is unclear and the homicide is initially written off as a drug-fuelled frenzy caused by toxic mushrooms. But then bizarre events start to pile up … more deaths occur and it is pretty clear that our policeman Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) is in over his head.
Jong-goo’s partner lays the blame for these events at the hands of a lone Japanese fisherman (Jun Kunimura) living on the outskirts of the village: everything was normal before he arrived, apparently. In an arresting scene we see him crouching over a deer carcass in the woods, savagely devouring its flesh while his eyes glow red. But are we watching reality or rumour?
Jong-goo is perplexed by these goings on, but the situation rapidly, no wildly, escalates when his young daughter, Hyo-jin, becomes ill and develops a rash. A mysterious woman in white (Woo-hee Chun) appears while he investigates yet another murder scene, tossing stones at him and predicting a cataclysm. From here events spiral out of control. We have ghosts in the wood, zombie-like brutes, and demonic possession.
Suspecting supernatural forces at play our bewildered cop seeks assistance from a sceptical local priest who tells him, “The Church cannot help you.” Desperate for answers Jong-goo agrees to his mother-in-law’s request for a shaman to attend and perform a ritual. We are then witness to one of the most memorable scenes ReidsonFilm has seen in a while: a seven minute sequence of a frenzied, hypnotic Grand Guignol of colour, light, and sound with rapid cross-cutting between the shaman, the Japanese outsider and Hyo-jin. It is mesmerising and disorientating…like an Aphex Twin set.
Who is responsible for his daughters distress? Jong-goo is no clearer and we have the Japanese man, the shaman, and the woman in white blaming each other. The detective is left having to make a decision to save his daughter and family.
They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
Luke 24:37-39
This verse from the Bible is the film’s prologue and The Wailing is shot through with spiritual references: a fusion of Catholicism, Korean shamanism and the occult. But that word again: ambiguity. The director plants seeds of doubt throughout the film’s narrative, some hidden, some explicit. After starting the film laughing at the witless policeman you begin to identify with him, continually questioning the motivation of others: where does the truth lie? Leading to Jong-goo’s fateful decision as the film reaches its climax, it boils down to a question of faith: who should you believe?
But my, what a journey. The Wailing is 156 minutes long but that time passes at pace. An intense viewing experience, Na Hong-jin manages sharp tonal shifts while looping in macabre dream sequences that seem unnervingly real. For the first half hour you may be lulled into thinking this is a black comedy until it dawns on you that this is a film of serious intent. It is so rich with symbolism you dare not miss a scene: the Japanese fisherman baits two worms on one hook, repeated shots of a hairpin, a loincloth, a cardigan … meaningful or meaningless?
Beautifully shot by cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, the nightmarish events are set at odds with the lush, green forest, the soft light, and sense of stillness that pervades the valley where Gokseong sits. The acting all around is convincing enough to remove any doubt about the characters’ motives but the top award has to go to Hwan-hee Kim, playing daughter Hyo-jin. Her performance makes Linda Blair as Regan in The Exorcist look like a Teletubby.
In the end, we are left grasping at reasons for what we have witnessed: disease, mysticism, religion, anti-Japanese xenophobia? But as one character says, “You are seeing what you expect to see.” Resolution? No…rather a dread sense of desolation.
Our advice: watch this film with a friend as i) it is genuinely scary, and ii) you want to have someone to argue with about what you think actually happened.
Maybe the question of ‘who is evil’ is an unsolvable one. It seems there are certain logical contradictions no matter how you frame the plot, and in a way this reflects the father's frustration with the seemingly unmotivated, divine punishment of his daughter. Terrible things happen to innocent people, and that's the nature of the universe - N
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 77
T - 84
N - 79
S - 76
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Coming next … Amazing Grace (2018)