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Review: The Wailing (곡성) (2016)
I started this movie thinking that it would be a crime movie but it ended up being a horror movie. Thankfully it wasn’t too frightening but I’m not used to watching horror movies so I had to read up on people’s analyses and the clues I missed. I still think it was interesting though. Until the end I think we’re meant to be questioning how this all happened. I would recommend this movie though include a warning for violence and gore.
Spoilers.
Story
Jong-gu was a policeman who was investigating a murder. People seemed to have gone berserk and kill their family. Jong-gu’s daughter Hyo-jin started to show worrying symptoms, including terrible nightmares, and her entire personality changing to a much more troubling and combative one overnight. Jong-gu’s mother-in-law called on a shaman to help.
Meanwhile in the investigation, Jong-gu was honing in on a Japanese visitor whom we’ll call the stranger as he was called in the Wikipedia article. The stranger was definitely very suspicious and as things at home got worse, Jong-gu was more aggressive with the stranger. Jong-gu also found his daughter’s shoe at the stranger’s house. He found his daughter had scratches along her thighs, so his guess was that the stranger had raped his daughter.
Hyo-jin’s behaviour was so troubling that she stabbed (and possibly killed) the neighbour. So the family had to escalate the situation. The shaman came to exorcise Hyo-jin. However, Hyo-jin was in so much pain that Jong-gu stopped the exorcism. Jong-gu and his wife took Hyo-jin to the hospital instead. Jong-gu and a group went to the stranger’s house to hunt him down but were attacked by a zombie-like monster. They tried to chase after the stranger and their car crashed into him. Hyo-jin’s health started to improve a bit.
Near the beginning of the movie there was a mysterious woman in white who would point Jong-gu to certain clues. The shaman saw her and began to vomit blood. He tried to leave the city but was hit with hallucinations. The shaman then called Jong-gu to tell him that they had the wrong person, that the evil spirit was not the Japanese stranger but the woman in white.
Jong-gu had asked a Japanese-speaking deacon to come with him to speak with the stranger on many occasions. The deacon’s family was also hit with the virus, where his uncle killed in a fit of rage.
Hyo-jin disappeared and Jong-gu went to find her only to bump into the mysterious woman who spoke cryptically. She tried to convince Jong-gu that she was not the evil one, though she was wearing the clothes of victims, including his daughter’s hairclip, which caused him to doubt her. She warned him not to return home until three rooster calls because she’d set a trap (for the spirits). But Jong-gu did not listen and went home to find that Hyo-jin had killed his wife and mother-in-law.
Meanwhile, the deacon approached the stranger, who had not died. However, the stranger eventually changed forms, into something of a demon, implying that the initial hypothesis was right, of the stranger being the evil spirit.
In the end, Hyo-jin was seated lifelessly on her front porch, similarly to how a murderer had at the beginning of the movie. Jong-gu was inside with a little sign of life, so it’s uncertain of whether Hyo-jin killed him. He reminisced about the good days with his daughter. The shaman went to the house and took things of them, including photos and such, and loaded them into his own car.
I went online to try to understand what had happened. It seems that the stranger had become possessed by a demon. The mysterious woman was a protective spirit or a shaman (possibly a human since Jong-gu could touch her). Apparently according to the Bible, “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her,” so she seemed to be clean. I think the shaman was good at first, but according to some comments I read, in Korean culture, if an exorcism is interrupted, then the demon may enter the shaman’s body. So that would explain why the shaman ended up helping the demon by trying to direct suspicion at the woman in white. As well, the shaman was vomiting profusely when he saw the woman in white.
I think the signs showed to the stranger having raped Hyo-jin and thus possessing her as well. There were rumours of the stranger being a rapist before this. And Hyo-jin fulfilled the possession by killing her own family, though some speculate she left her father alive as her human side was fighting the possession. In terms of the trap, I think the woman in white was focused on trapping the spirit. But nothing could be done about Jong-gu’s family being murdered.
Fascinating story. Though it was 2.5 hours long, I do think I’ll be thinking about it and I may have to go back and look for the clues. Honestly the demon form of the stranger reminded me a bit of that scary man in Mulholland Drive so perhaps I may get the scaries over the next week lol.
Production
Well shot, though admittedly a lot of this movie feels like other South Korean crime movies I’ve seen, with a bit of a grey tint. The acting was fine, though I felt some of the emotions were a bit too straightforward? I’ve mentioned this before but characters in Korean media often only get angry in one way, which is by screaming. And it gets really old because I have never met a person who gets angry in that way. It’s probably a cultural thing but it’s a bit odd to me.
Characters
Jeon Jong-gu
Our main character and just a normal guy caught up in the situation. His biggest connection to the case was through his daughter, as he is driven to save her from the possession. Him being a cop just gave him another avenue to investigate. Obviously he was very worried about his daughter and he grew very agitated. He definitely overstepped professional lines when speaking to the stranger but he was driven by his emotions. He also felt very sympathetic to his daughter in pain during the exorcism and that was why he stopped it despite it likely having a detrimental outcome overall. And at the end of the movie, he continued to be driven by his emotions. The woman in white told him not to go or else he’d lose everything. But he went because he needed to see Hyo-jin, because he didn’t trust the woman. And in the end, he died while treasuring his happy feelings from his life, with his daughter who would now never be the same. Poor guy.
Jeon Hyo-jin
Hyo-jin was Jong-gu’s daughter. She was a spunky little kid and a bit mischievous but overall had a good relationship with her parents. One night she had brought clean clothes to her father at the police station and dropped her hairclip. I think it was that night that she would have encountered the stranger and been raped by him. She experienced a terrible nightmare, writhing in the way of possession, and afterwards she changed completely. Her eating habits were very different but even her mom and grandma could tell things were off. When Jong-gu spoke to him, she barely responded like a rebellious child, and when he asked her about the shoe he found at the stranger’s, she gave him a non-answer and screamed at him before storming out. Hyo-jin continued to exhibit very troubling behaviour, saying that she’d kill them all. Grandma was very troubled and said she’d call the shaman.
There was one day where Jong-gu was paralyzed and couldn’t move, so he was taken to the hospital, though that may have been a result of the possession of Hyo-jin. But since Jong-gu’s wife and mother-in-law went to the hospital with him, Hyo-jin was being watched by the neighbour. Hyo-jin stabbed the neighbour and was in shock afterwards.
Thus, the shaman was arranged to come. Hyo-jin was still very troubled and aggressive and didn’t take to the exorcism well but that was to be expected since the demon was still possessing her. She was in so much pain that Jong-gu stopped the exorcism, but that meant she was still possessed.
Hyo-jin seemed to be better after the stranger died via car crash. But one day she disappeared and when she returned, she exhibited similar behaviour to her initial possession. She messily ate everything in the fridge, and then killed her mom and grandma. It’s implied that she attacked her father too, though we’re not sure if he was alive. At the end of the movie, she was leaning on the porch very soullessly.
Hyo-jin was a victim of possession. And unfortunately she lost her family because of it.
The Stranger
The stranger was from Japan. There were rumours about him being a zombie, a cannibal, a rapist. Jong-gu dismissed those. Jong-gu couldn’t speak to him so he would bring the deacon to translate for him. The first time they went to the house, they were attacked by the stranger’s dog and left in a daze, though one of Jong-gu’s colleagues found his daughter’s shoe which put him on his tale. They also found pictures of the victims and a weird ritualistic set up.
After the failed exorcism, they went to the stranger’s house to arrest him/beat him up, but they were attacked by a zombie instead. The stranger fled in fear but was caught up to. He still ended up being crashed to. And we assumed he was dead, until the woman in white told us that he was not.
The stranger showed up once again at the end of the movie. The deacon went to speak to him, accusing him of being the devil. And the stranger showed his true form this time, as a devil indeed.
A lot of comments I read on Wikipedia determined that he was originally a monk who had become possessed while working in South Korea. But I think it’s clear that he was behind the possession.
Woman in white
The woman in white first appeared at one of the crime scenes where she was throwing rocks at Jong-gu and his colleague. She was speaking cryptically, but was also very clear about who she thought was the murderer and what she saw. Jong-gu wanted to keep her around as a witness but she fled.
When the woman in white appeared before the shaman, he vomited blood profusely. Originally that would have hinted to us that she was some kind of evil spirit. However, that was before we knew that the shaman was shady. So if we think about it in hindsight, we know now that the woman in white was some type of protector.
Jong-gu bumped into the woman in white while searching for Hyo-jin. She was again speaking cryptically. But Jong-gu was worried about finding his daughter. He also noticed that the woman in white had of the victims, including the sweater of a victim and his daughter’s hairclip.
I think the woman in white was more concerned with capturing the evil spirit than she was with the deaths, because she figured there was nothing she could do about the deaths. So that was why she was trying to prevent Jong-gu from going home, because she’d set a trap for the spirit. But since Jong-gu did interrupt her trap, I guess the spirit did live on the stranger’s body.
Shaman
I think the shaman was originally an actual shaman who was trying to exorcise the demon who possessed Hyo-jin. But as mentioned, he might have become possessed during the failed exorcism.
After he bumped into the woman in white, he tried to point Jong-gu’s suspicion to her. He told Jong-gu that he’d mistakenly hexed the stranger and that the woman in white was the real evil spirit. While Jong-gu was speaking with the woman in white (when Hyo-jin was missing), the woman in white urged him to wait for three rooster crows, but the shaman kept urging Jong-gu to return home to see to his daughter, which would interrupt the trap.
At the end of the movie, we saw that the shaman took photos of crime scenes (might have been the murder of the deacon’s uncle’s landlady that he was photographing). But he also went to Jong-gu’s house and retrieved his possessions. And now that I think about it, maybe those photos were how the stranger had photos of his victims.
There was an alternate ending where the shaman was shown picking up the stranger, thus showing that they were fully in cahoots. But that was not included in the movie to show a more ambiguous story.
Themes
We see that there are heavy religious and mythology themes in this movie and unfortunately I think many of them flew over my head. But I think it’d be fun to go back and rewatch this movie with some of that knowledge. Because I’m sure there are many actions and symbols that would have served as clues without me knowing.
The woman in white told Jong-gu that he’d sinned by wrongfully accusing someone and killing someone. But Jong-gu insisted that his daughter was sick first, that he had only acted in retaliation of that. I’m not sure about the wrongful accusations (if that was Jong-gu’s accusation towards the woman in white that was the sin), but I think he technically killed the human spirit of the stranger which was why the demon was now able to fully take over his body. But it is unfair, isn’t it? He was acting out in anger. But maybe that is the story here, that a sin is a sin no matter where it comes from. In the same vein, can we excuse the murders of the victims? They weren’t in their right mind but they did kill.
I’m guessing the English title “the Wailing” is a reference to those who were possessed, as they had very extreme nightmares. However, people who were not fully possessed, like Jong-gu, also experienced nightmares where he wailed. So even if only one person is possessed, the entire family suffers.
Overall
Interesting and fascinating movie. I’d be interested to see horror movies if they were a bit more psychological and eerie with not as much gore and violence like this one.
Spoilers.
Story
Jong-gu was a policeman who was investigating a murder. People seemed to have gone berserk and kill their family. Jong-gu’s daughter Hyo-jin started to show worrying symptoms, including terrible nightmares, and her entire personality changing to a much more troubling and combative one overnight. Jong-gu’s mother-in-law called on a shaman to help.
Meanwhile in the investigation, Jong-gu was honing in on a Japanese visitor whom we’ll call the stranger as he was called in the Wikipedia article. The stranger was definitely very suspicious and as things at home got worse, Jong-gu was more aggressive with the stranger. Jong-gu also found his daughter’s shoe at the stranger’s house. He found his daughter had scratches along her thighs, so his guess was that the stranger had raped his daughter.
Hyo-jin’s behaviour was so troubling that she stabbed (and possibly killed) the neighbour. So the family had to escalate the situation. The shaman came to exorcise Hyo-jin. However, Hyo-jin was in so much pain that Jong-gu stopped the exorcism. Jong-gu and his wife took Hyo-jin to the hospital instead. Jong-gu and a group went to the stranger’s house to hunt him down but were attacked by a zombie-like monster. They tried to chase after the stranger and their car crashed into him. Hyo-jin’s health started to improve a bit.
Near the beginning of the movie there was a mysterious woman in white who would point Jong-gu to certain clues. The shaman saw her and began to vomit blood. He tried to leave the city but was hit with hallucinations. The shaman then called Jong-gu to tell him that they had the wrong person, that the evil spirit was not the Japanese stranger but the woman in white.
Jong-gu had asked a Japanese-speaking deacon to come with him to speak with the stranger on many occasions. The deacon’s family was also hit with the virus, where his uncle killed in a fit of rage.
Hyo-jin disappeared and Jong-gu went to find her only to bump into the mysterious woman who spoke cryptically. She tried to convince Jong-gu that she was not the evil one, though she was wearing the clothes of victims, including his daughter’s hairclip, which caused him to doubt her. She warned him not to return home until three rooster calls because she’d set a trap (for the spirits). But Jong-gu did not listen and went home to find that Hyo-jin had killed his wife and mother-in-law.
Meanwhile, the deacon approached the stranger, who had not died. However, the stranger eventually changed forms, into something of a demon, implying that the initial hypothesis was right, of the stranger being the evil spirit.
In the end, Hyo-jin was seated lifelessly on her front porch, similarly to how a murderer had at the beginning of the movie. Jong-gu was inside with a little sign of life, so it’s uncertain of whether Hyo-jin killed him. He reminisced about the good days with his daughter. The shaman went to the house and took things of them, including photos and such, and loaded them into his own car.
I went online to try to understand what had happened. It seems that the stranger had become possessed by a demon. The mysterious woman was a protective spirit or a shaman (possibly a human since Jong-gu could touch her). Apparently according to the Bible, “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her,” so she seemed to be clean. I think the shaman was good at first, but according to some comments I read, in Korean culture, if an exorcism is interrupted, then the demon may enter the shaman’s body. So that would explain why the shaman ended up helping the demon by trying to direct suspicion at the woman in white. As well, the shaman was vomiting profusely when he saw the woman in white.
I think the signs showed to the stranger having raped Hyo-jin and thus possessing her as well. There were rumours of the stranger being a rapist before this. And Hyo-jin fulfilled the possession by killing her own family, though some speculate she left her father alive as her human side was fighting the possession. In terms of the trap, I think the woman in white was focused on trapping the spirit. But nothing could be done about Jong-gu’s family being murdered.
Fascinating story. Though it was 2.5 hours long, I do think I’ll be thinking about it and I may have to go back and look for the clues. Honestly the demon form of the stranger reminded me a bit of that scary man in Mulholland Drive so perhaps I may get the scaries over the next week lol.
Production
Well shot, though admittedly a lot of this movie feels like other South Korean crime movies I’ve seen, with a bit of a grey tint. The acting was fine, though I felt some of the emotions were a bit too straightforward? I’ve mentioned this before but characters in Korean media often only get angry in one way, which is by screaming. And it gets really old because I have never met a person who gets angry in that way. It’s probably a cultural thing but it’s a bit odd to me.
Characters
Jeon Jong-gu
Our main character and just a normal guy caught up in the situation. His biggest connection to the case was through his daughter, as he is driven to save her from the possession. Him being a cop just gave him another avenue to investigate. Obviously he was very worried about his daughter and he grew very agitated. He definitely overstepped professional lines when speaking to the stranger but he was driven by his emotions. He also felt very sympathetic to his daughter in pain during the exorcism and that was why he stopped it despite it likely having a detrimental outcome overall. And at the end of the movie, he continued to be driven by his emotions. The woman in white told him not to go or else he’d lose everything. But he went because he needed to see Hyo-jin, because he didn’t trust the woman. And in the end, he died while treasuring his happy feelings from his life, with his daughter who would now never be the same. Poor guy.
Jeon Hyo-jin
Hyo-jin was Jong-gu’s daughter. She was a spunky little kid and a bit mischievous but overall had a good relationship with her parents. One night she had brought clean clothes to her father at the police station and dropped her hairclip. I think it was that night that she would have encountered the stranger and been raped by him. She experienced a terrible nightmare, writhing in the way of possession, and afterwards she changed completely. Her eating habits were very different but even her mom and grandma could tell things were off. When Jong-gu spoke to him, she barely responded like a rebellious child, and when he asked her about the shoe he found at the stranger’s, she gave him a non-answer and screamed at him before storming out. Hyo-jin continued to exhibit very troubling behaviour, saying that she’d kill them all. Grandma was very troubled and said she’d call the shaman.
There was one day where Jong-gu was paralyzed and couldn’t move, so he was taken to the hospital, though that may have been a result of the possession of Hyo-jin. But since Jong-gu’s wife and mother-in-law went to the hospital with him, Hyo-jin was being watched by the neighbour. Hyo-jin stabbed the neighbour and was in shock afterwards.
Thus, the shaman was arranged to come. Hyo-jin was still very troubled and aggressive and didn’t take to the exorcism well but that was to be expected since the demon was still possessing her. She was in so much pain that Jong-gu stopped the exorcism, but that meant she was still possessed.
Hyo-jin seemed to be better after the stranger died via car crash. But one day she disappeared and when she returned, she exhibited similar behaviour to her initial possession. She messily ate everything in the fridge, and then killed her mom and grandma. It’s implied that she attacked her father too, though we’re not sure if he was alive. At the end of the movie, she was leaning on the porch very soullessly.
Hyo-jin was a victim of possession. And unfortunately she lost her family because of it.
The Stranger
The stranger was from Japan. There were rumours about him being a zombie, a cannibal, a rapist. Jong-gu dismissed those. Jong-gu couldn’t speak to him so he would bring the deacon to translate for him. The first time they went to the house, they were attacked by the stranger’s dog and left in a daze, though one of Jong-gu’s colleagues found his daughter’s shoe which put him on his tale. They also found pictures of the victims and a weird ritualistic set up.
After the failed exorcism, they went to the stranger’s house to arrest him/beat him up, but they were attacked by a zombie instead. The stranger fled in fear but was caught up to. He still ended up being crashed to. And we assumed he was dead, until the woman in white told us that he was not.
The stranger showed up once again at the end of the movie. The deacon went to speak to him, accusing him of being the devil. And the stranger showed his true form this time, as a devil indeed.
A lot of comments I read on Wikipedia determined that he was originally a monk who had become possessed while working in South Korea. But I think it’s clear that he was behind the possession.
Woman in white
The woman in white first appeared at one of the crime scenes where she was throwing rocks at Jong-gu and his colleague. She was speaking cryptically, but was also very clear about who she thought was the murderer and what she saw. Jong-gu wanted to keep her around as a witness but she fled.
When the woman in white appeared before the shaman, he vomited blood profusely. Originally that would have hinted to us that she was some kind of evil spirit. However, that was before we knew that the shaman was shady. So if we think about it in hindsight, we know now that the woman in white was some type of protector.
Jong-gu bumped into the woman in white while searching for Hyo-jin. She was again speaking cryptically. But Jong-gu was worried about finding his daughter. He also noticed that the woman in white had of the victims, including the sweater of a victim and his daughter’s hairclip.
I think the woman in white was more concerned with capturing the evil spirit than she was with the deaths, because she figured there was nothing she could do about the deaths. So that was why she was trying to prevent Jong-gu from going home, because she’d set a trap for the spirit. But since Jong-gu did interrupt her trap, I guess the spirit did live on the stranger’s body.
Shaman
I think the shaman was originally an actual shaman who was trying to exorcise the demon who possessed Hyo-jin. But as mentioned, he might have become possessed during the failed exorcism.
After he bumped into the woman in white, he tried to point Jong-gu’s suspicion to her. He told Jong-gu that he’d mistakenly hexed the stranger and that the woman in white was the real evil spirit. While Jong-gu was speaking with the woman in white (when Hyo-jin was missing), the woman in white urged him to wait for three rooster crows, but the shaman kept urging Jong-gu to return home to see to his daughter, which would interrupt the trap.
At the end of the movie, we saw that the shaman took photos of crime scenes (might have been the murder of the deacon’s uncle’s landlady that he was photographing). But he also went to Jong-gu’s house and retrieved his possessions. And now that I think about it, maybe those photos were how the stranger had photos of his victims.
There was an alternate ending where the shaman was shown picking up the stranger, thus showing that they were fully in cahoots. But that was not included in the movie to show a more ambiguous story.
Themes
We see that there are heavy religious and mythology themes in this movie and unfortunately I think many of them flew over my head. But I think it’d be fun to go back and rewatch this movie with some of that knowledge. Because I’m sure there are many actions and symbols that would have served as clues without me knowing.
The woman in white told Jong-gu that he’d sinned by wrongfully accusing someone and killing someone. But Jong-gu insisted that his daughter was sick first, that he had only acted in retaliation of that. I’m not sure about the wrongful accusations (if that was Jong-gu’s accusation towards the woman in white that was the sin), but I think he technically killed the human spirit of the stranger which was why the demon was now able to fully take over his body. But it is unfair, isn’t it? He was acting out in anger. But maybe that is the story here, that a sin is a sin no matter where it comes from. In the same vein, can we excuse the murders of the victims? They weren’t in their right mind but they did kill.
I’m guessing the English title “the Wailing” is a reference to those who were possessed, as they had very extreme nightmares. However, people who were not fully possessed, like Jong-gu, also experienced nightmares where he wailed. So even if only one person is possessed, the entire family suffers.
Overall
Interesting and fascinating movie. I’d be interested to see horror movies if they were a bit more psychological and eerie with not as much gore and violence like this one.