Halloween Movie Madness: Day 9
The Wailing is a movie that's been on my list for years. Directed by Na Hong-jin, it's a Korean thriller that keeps spinning you into different directions up until the very last minute. It stars Kwak Do-Won, Jung-min Hwang, Woo-hee Chun, Jun Kunimura (The Audition), Han-cheol Jo, Jang So-yeon, and Seong-yeon Park. We follow a police officer as he's called to various tragedies in his small village. They seem unrelated until the rumors start implicating a Japanese man who lives outside of town in the forest. Could he be killing people or making them sick or possessing them? All this and more! Maybe. It could be a demon. Maybe he's innocent. The movie takes its time to develop the characters. You know who these people are and how they relate to one another. We might find some of them taxing, but they are always real. When terrible things befall them, we feel sorry for them. However, until you get to the very end of the movie, you don't know who is really good and truly evil. While I called some of the plot early, there were still subtleties that I missed. It is definitely worth a watch.