Goksung - La presenza del diavolo

Watching this, quite a few things may confuse you. The story is not easy at all. It is about good and evil though. It is about how we perceive the world and what we make of it. It is about many things, a lot of you may experience and see, that the person next to you may not see.

The movie is made to be watched more than once. I had heard about the Wailing and how good it supposedly is - well now I can leave the supposedly part away. It is as good as people say it is. And it is another example of south korean filmmaking that not few see as a powerhouse in the world right now (some may argue it has been for quite some time now). This movie is another example for just that.

It is also a movie about prejudice, about how small our world is and how we react to an outside "influence". How things collapse and what society is capable of ... again so many things to discover here. Now that being said, it doesn't mean you will like the movie. Or that if you don't like it, it doesn't mean you have no taste in movies. That is the great thing about films. We all have different tastes and we all value things different. You may just want to see explosions. And that's more than fine. But it's not what you'll get here ... not for the weak hearted or squeamish just to be clear though ... this is brutal .. to watch!

After catapulting himself into the league of South Korea's brightest up-n-coming filmmakers with his extremely polished & mercilessly violent directional debut and then following it up with another thriller that was more or less a misfire, director Na Hong-jin makes a splendid return to form after six years of inactivity, and delivers a cinema that's drenched in blood, sickness & devilry.

The story of The Wailing unfolds in a small South Korean village where a mysterious illness begins to spread & claim many lives after the arrival of a strange Japanese man in the nearby mountains. Investigating the case is a police officer who becomes all the more involved after his own daughter begins exhibiting similar symptoms and enlists the help of a shaman to solve the mystery before its too late.

Written & directed by Na Hong-jin, The Wailing finds the budding filmmaker stepping into the realms of supernatural horror and features numerous elements that made his first film an instant classic. It is a considerable improvement over Hong-jin's previous film, plus his direction exhibits more confidence & comfort this time. The script is just as impressive although it still could've used a bit more refinement.

The film doesn't hold back on violence & gore and keeps the element of doubt alive until the very end. Also admirable is how successfully it manages to force its viewers to switch their allegiance from time to time and keeps them in the dark throughout its runtime. Humour is brilliantly utilised whenever it's required but the tone is grim for the most part and only intensifies as the plot nears its conclusion.

The technical aspects are finely executed. The rural setting & isolated surroundings provide a big enough canvas for the horror to play out. Camera-work is expertly carried out, filming each n every moment in fine detail. Editing is definitely a highlight, given the unpredictable nature of its plot in addition to unforeseen twists n turns, and despite its 156 minutes runtime, it is never boring and is actually cleverly paced from beginning to end.

Coming to the performances, the entire cast chips in with apt contributions in their given roles and play their part responsibly. Kwak Do-won plays the police officer investigating the mystery illness & killings and although a comic relief at first, he wises up as the plot progresses. Hwang Jung-min is in as a shaman and goes bonkers with his role. But the two most measured inputs comes from Jun Kunimura & Chin Woo-hee who play the Japanese stranger & a mysterious woman respectively.

On an overall scale, The Wailing is a fresh, fascinating & ferocious entry in the world of horror that makes terrific use of its atmosphere & supernatural elements to deliver a thoroughly unsettling & consistently engaging experience. There are, however, times when it may leave you a little lost or unsure of what's happening but the interest is never lost for once and only gains momentum as it heads towards its long-awaited finale. A work of mythic weirdness that's diabolical in every sense of the word, The Wailing comes highly recommended.

About 40 minutes into the movie, I stopped to look at how much time was left and was actually RELIEVED to see that there was still so much left. That's how engaging and interesting the story was for me.

Before watching the movie I read one review on here that said it was a "smorgasbord" of genres (it was a positive review), but it doesn't really feel like it. I mean, yes, I can see it, but the storytelling is so fluid and well written that the multiple genre aspects didn't feel out of place at all. It works. It works so well that I almost feel like it's redundant to point out that there are "so many genres."

I found the second half of this movie quite similar to The Witch. Not necessarily in terms of the storyline, but the pace, the severity, the terror. Both movies are quite psychological. But The Wailing delivers somewhat of a more complex storyline.

Cinematography was breathtaking. Jun Kunimura was ridiculous (in a good way). All the actors were on point. I'm not going to point out or mention "Asian horror" here (although, technically I just did I guess, lol). I just don't think that it's necessary to pigeonhole this movie into anything other than what it is; a great horror.

I remember that I had a gut(Korean traditional exorcism by mudang like shaman) when I was 13. Back then, I was the most weakest student in my class. So my grandma always worried about my health and I met mudang with my grandma. After finishing ceremony, I got to her house by old truck. she said " Don't look back" "If you look back, bad spirits follow us and it will be harmful to us".and then I closed my eyes tightly until I got to her house.Because It was so sacred.

In a word about this movie, It feels like I looked back even if my grandma warned me.

That's all I can't say anymore.

You can find every good perspective of Korean movies. Moreover, You can taste a lot of texture of flavor such as Comedy, Horror(Exorcism,Gore,Traditional),philosophy(Religion, identity,suspicion),thriller. This movie is so ambitious. but It is very successful.

If you are interested in this movie, You should watch Bulshinjiok(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535472/) before this movie. It will be helpful to understand Korean traditional ceremony and shamanism also you can see improvements of Korean movie.

Some movies have a coherent plot that is told in a non-straightforward fashion, or that is open to several interpretations, or that leaves out some parts requiring the audience to fill-in (e.g. an open end), and possibly this filling-in can be done in more than one way. These movies require several viewings and considerable thought to make sense.

After watching The Wailing for the first time, I had the impression that it was this kind of movie. However, after watching it again, pondering it, and then reading and watching attempts by various people to interpret/explain it, I have come to a different conclusion. Namely, this movie does not have a coherent underlying plot. No matter how you shift the pieces of the puzzle in an attempt to recreate a coherent narrative, some pieces will never fit together, and not due to your incompetence, but because the underlying story is - possibly intentionally, possibly not - fundamentally inconsistent. It's like one of those optical illusions or Escher drawings that appear to describe a physical object, but in fact don't make physical sense.

Accordingly, whether one enjoys this movie or not boils down to whether one can be content with a movie that is technically well-made (cinematography, acting, costumes, etc.), but (a) its plot makes no sense, and (b) it is told in a deceptive way as to lure you into thinking that the plot would make sense if only you gave the matter sufficient thought, thus leaving you with a lingering, irritating feeling of dissatisfaction and confusion.

And maybe this is precisely the point of the movie: rather than telling a story, its purpose is to instill in the audience a feeling of confusion in the face of a sequence of events that almost, but not quite, makes sense. Much like life at times, no?