I have had a very bust three days of watching movies. First I saw NOPE, then went to the theatres to see PEARL, and as the closer took a lot of mushrooms and watched THE WAILING.
The Wailing (Korean: 곡성; Hanja: 哭聲; RR: Gokseong) is a 2016 South Korean horror film written and directed by Na Hong-jin and starring Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min, Chun Woo-hee. In the small village Goksung in South Korea, police officer Jong-Goo investigates bizarre murders caused by a mysterious disease. His partner relays gossip that a Japanese stranger, who lives in a secluded house in the mountains, would be an evil spirit responsible for the illness. Jong-Goo decides to visit the stranger along with his partner and a young priest who speaks Japanese. They find an altar with a goat head, pictures on the walls of the infected people that died, and an attacking guard dog that prevents their departure until the stranger arrives. Jong-Goo finds one shoe of his beloved daughter, Hyo-jin, in the house of the stranger, and soon she becomes sick. His mother-in-law summons the shaman Il-gwang to save her granddaughter while a mysterious woman tells Jong-Goo that the stranger is responsible. Who might be the demon that is bringing sickness to Goksung?
This movies starts at a point so severe and uncomfortable that most people would tap out, and things only get more and more intense. I have often said in the past that the OG CANDYAMN has the best on screen representation of a panic attack, but this movie easily takes the cake for both its extreme nature and its frequency.
This movies main goal is to break you down. Every crime scene this movie leads us to is an overwhelming nightmare of suffering, screaming, destruction, and agony. A thousand Toni Collets wailing in agony until all that suffering becomes a single piercing sound that twists your guts and overwhelms all of your senses. Whether you have time to realize it or not, in this situation you have 2 options. The first option is to keep trying to do good. To take all of the forces trying to pull in vastly different directions, go with your gut, and pick the path that feels right to you with no guarantees you’re making the right choice. If you choose this path you move forward on blind faith alone, convinced that everything will work out in the end.
If you are unable/unwilling to go down that path, the only option left is to join in with the wailing. To Add your own agony to the deafening millions of those who are suffering, to stop fighting, to give up. To accept that no matter to hard you fight or how hard you believe, there is nothing you can do to save the ones you love. No happy endings here, no faint hint at an optimistic future for all those loveable characters.
But hey that’s what blind faith gets you I guess
10/10
Comments