The Wail­ing

Although called The Wail­ing in Eng­lish, Ha Nong-jin’s third fea­ture (after 2008’s The Chas­er and 2010’s The Yel­low Sea) was released in its native South Korea under the title Gok­sung, which is also the name of the vil­lage where its mys­ter­ies unfold.

Small-town val­ues pro­pel events here. Amid a bizarre out­break of mal­a­dy, mad­ness and mur­der, local police­man Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) seeks answers with the kind of bum­bling back­woods incom­pe­tence last seen in Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 film Mem­o­ries of Mur­der. Dri­ven as much by crazy rumours, dreams, super­sti­tion and xeno­pho­bic scape­goat­ing as by hard facts, Jong-goo is quick to per­se­cute a limp­ing Japan­ese recluse (Jun Kunimu­ra). As Jong-goo’s own daugh­ter Hyo-jin (Kim Hwan-hee) falls ill and under­goes a rad­i­cal change in per­son­al­i­ty, the cop is per­suad­ed to turn to a shaman (Hwang Jung-min) for help, even as a trainee Catholic dea­con joins the inves­tiga­tive team, and a woman (Chun Woo-hee) occa­sion­al­ly offers cryp­tic com­men­tary from the sidelines.

“Why do doubts rise in your mind?” The Wail­ing begins with a Bib­li­cal quote (Luke 24.38−39) con­cern­ing the ini­tial fear of Jesus’ dis­ci­ples that the res­ur­rect­ed, flesh-and-bone fig­ure before them is a ghost. Doubt also dom­i­nates Ha’s tale of a whole com­mu­ni­ty pos­sessed. For Ha con­jures an uncan­ny, irra­tional spir­it from the very inde­ter­mi­na­cy of his plot­ting, leav­ing char­ac­ters and view­ers alike uncer­tain what they are seeing.

As sev­er­al explana­to­ry frames vie to account for what is hap­pen­ing, it is left to each of us to decide if there’s a slip­pery dev­il at work (and just who that demon might be), or if the vil­lagers have been at the Kool-Aid. Either way, Ha’s unnerv­ing game with per­cep­tions expos­es the con­flict­ing ide­olo­gies of a nation still in development.