Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Tockinit not horrible nor great

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Sam Cannon The biggest strength the Wailing has is how deeply entrenched the story is in the setting. This film would not work in any other setting, because the story needs a town in South Korea to work, as the entire plot relies on South Korea's culture and history.The story begins as a police drama mystery, with our protagonist, Jong Goo, a bumbling, clumsy police officer and family man, who is confronted by a sudden increase in violence and murder in the town, which is seemingly linked to the arrival of a mysterious Japanese man. But as the film progresses, the story transforms into a supernatural horror film that is deeply entrenched in both Buddhist and Christian ideas of demons and the supernatural. When Jong Goo's daughter gets sick with what he believes to be a sickness linked to the supernatural, Jong enlists the help of both a Catholic deacon and a local Shaman to help him figure out what is going on, and how he can stop it.The horror aspects of the film truly shine out, with a next-to zero percent reliance on jump scares, the creepiness of the film comes through in slow pans, confronting gory scenes, closeups of things that aren't quite what they seem, and a sense of dread that builds consistently over the 2 1/2 hour running time.Right up to the end credits is a guessing game of who is responsible for the occurances of the film, and when the truth is finally revealed, it ties the entire film together. What once seemed contradictory now makes sense within the context of the full film.In conclusion, if you want something that will hold your attention for 2 1/2 hours, this film is a fantastic use of your time, and will keep you engaged for the full run time.

hongkong666 Watching "The Wailing" is quite an undertaking. With a runtime of almost 3 hours this Korean Horror-Triller is a shear beast. Unfortunately I feel like pretty much more than half the runtime should have been cut. "The Wailing" circles around in a seemingly endless "who done it" or, to be more precise, "who is it" and even though the acting of our lead Do-won Kwak was not too bad, the dialogues bothered me constantly. I find myself repeating this for about every Asian movie and I assume it must be a cultural thing. I mostly find the talk so generic and pointless, that you could reduce some movies to 5-10 important lines and let them be quiet for the entire rest of the runtime. And this movie is no different. The best acting performance was delivered by Jun Kunimura, who not only presented a great play with mimic, but also refused to talk much (I bet he knew I would appreciate that). The cinematography was pretty good and I liked the realistic appearing gore effects. Not so much on the "possessed zombies" but therefore on the crime scenes and such. With that many pro's and con's "The Wailing" ends up somewhere in the middle and can therefore be labeled average.

Páiric O'Corráin The Wailing: South Korean Horror involving Demons, a Shaman, strange infections, murders and perhaps Zombies; certainly a lot of biting going on. A Japanese stranger (Jun Kunimura) is living in a shack in the woods in rural South Korea, people say that he eats deer alive and infects people, perhaps both physically and mentally. Is he some sort of Demon? There is also a strange young woman (Chun Woo-hee), is she in fact the source of the area's ills?Villagers begin to act strangely, start murder each other gruesomely, run around biting people, commit arson. A local police sergeant (Kwak Do-won) investigates and puts his own family at risk. His daughter (Kim Hwan-hee) may be possessed or controlled by a Demon. He is persuaded to call in a Shaman (Hwang Jung-min) to perform an exorcism but the Shaman realises that this in itself won't solve the problem, a stronger ritual will be required to finally rid the village of the Demon.Quite a violent film with several brutal murders committed both on and off stage. Also elements of psychological terror are well used throughout the film, in particular the primeval panic evoked by the forest. The ritual itself is explained and illustrated in detail, both the animal sacrifices during it and the cleansing rites necessary beforehand, bringing to mind the film A Dark Song. This is South Korean Folk Horror.Directed and written by Na Hong-jin this is a demanding film which you will not easily put out of your mind. At 156 minutes however it does drag in places and would have benefited from 20 minutes being judiciously cut from the running time. 8.5/10. On Netflix.

julesfdelorme The Wailing (Gok-seung) I've had a lot of time on my hands of late. Stuck in bed mostly, I've been watching a lot of TV and a lot of movies. Some of it good. Some of it bad. And a bit of it surprising. The Korean film Gok-seung, The Wailing, was one of those surprising things for me. It's one of those types of movies that I think we should be talking about a lot more than we generally do. It's so easy to talk about the big budget main stream films. So many of us, though, tend to overlook the smaller budget films, particularly from markets that we don't pay very much attention to when it comes to movies. Some Japanese films have captured mainstream attention, from the wonderful Akira Kurosawa films of the past, shlocky monster movies like Godzilla, Manga, Anime and Animation works, and horror movies like The Ring. Too many of those movies got badly remade by Hollywood, though The Magnificent Seven, For a Few Dollars More and even Star Wars managed to take Kurosawa's work and make pretty good movies out of them. This has also been true of some Northern European films and television series, particularly Sweden, though they too have a long history of "art film" prestige, and an unfortunate history of bad or just less powerful Hollywood remakes. But smaller, lesser known markets, like Korea, or Iran and so many other countries with burgeoning film industries, too often get overlooked. And movies that do not qualify as "art film" get even more overlooked, probably because they do not appeal to our inner snobs and do not make for good "Look how smart and cultured I am." types of references. South Korea has in fact been making its own interesting horror and science fiction films for a while now. This undoubtedly has a similar source of inspiration as the American science fiction films and Japanese monster movies of the 50s and 60s: an intimate relationship and natural paranoia about the possibility of very real annihilation, of a hidden enemy that might very well actually exist, in this case due to the proximity to the unstable North Korean government. This has led to a very similar type of undertone that made movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing or Godzilla much better than they should have been. Gok-seung, The Wailing is a great example of just this type of movie. On the surface it starts out seeming like another zombie/possession movie, though with a surprising mix of comic characterization mixed in. The lead character is an overweight, mildly incompetent, and not at all heroic cop in a small mountain village where some odd, possibly supernatural deaths take place. Do-won Kwak, as Jong-goo is not exactly what you would picture as a leading man. But his pock marked fleshy face is both wonderfully expressive when he needs it to be and a blank almost mindless mask at other times, calling to mind the wonderful Japanese/Korean actor and director Takeshi Kitano, particularly in the way that he relates to the world around him and his fellow human beings. Except for his daughter Hyo-jin, played wonderfully by Hwan-hee Kim. She is the polar opposite of her father. She is sweet, full of life and of a surprising level of mature honesty and wisdom. Jong-goo clearly adores his daughter. When he is in her presence he melts. He emanates a deep uncynical fatherly love. He is a different human being when he is with her. So we know of course that Hyo-jin will play a major role, but we don't exactly how, and we definitely do not know how interesting the course that the movie will take, because at first it seems like such an obvious genre film. It's not. Even when the story begins to unfold, and we think we know what the movie is about, it manages to surprise. And like those great movies of the 50s and 60s, Gok-seung has a surprisingly deep undertow, reflecting those American science fiction films in the way that the characters must struggle with the question of how exactly we can tell the difference between good and evil. It's also refreshing to see characters freak out when faced with the weird and the supernatural. If we're being completely honest about of it, how many of us would end up squealing and curled up in a ball if we were actually faced with flesh eating ghouls or demons? It's nice for once, and often very funny, to watch people actually do that. The Wailing could easily pass as just a better than average horror movie, and can easily be appreciated as nothing more than that. It's funny. It's entertaining. It's pretty creepy at times. And it's pretty shlocky at other times. But The Wailing, much like its main characters, is also far smarter than it seems to be. So, watch it if you like horror movies, if you like comedy, or if you just like to be entertained. But maybe, when you're done just enjoying Gok-seung, The Wailing, take a brief moment to appreciate how much better a film it was than it seemed to be. You can find it on Netflix. Maybe it's not for everyone out there. But I think more of you are going to like it than you might first think. You might even be able to brag to your friends a bit that you've found a film that they didn't know anything about. They may not be as impressed as they might be if you had watched a Kurosawa or Bergman film. But that's okay. Art isn't always that much fun. But not everything has to be Art to be very very good. The Wailing isn't Art. Not by a long shot. But it is very good. And it's fun. We should be talking more about movies like Gok-seung, The Wailing. And we should be far less ashamed of having fun. Because sometimes fun can be smart too.