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When Ambiguity Mistakes Itself for Depth
Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing wants you to believe it’s profound. It struts into the room dripping with rainwater, clutching its Bible and incense, whispering about faith, sin, and corruption. But the longer you watch, the clearer it becomes: this isn’t layered storytelling — it’s confusion wearing a monk’s robe.
The film opens with promise: an isolated village, a mysterious illness, a bumbling cop whose life begins to unravel. The setup hints at slow-burn existential dread — the kind that seeps under your skin and makes you question what’s real. Unfortunately, what follows isn’t dread; it’s narrative whiplash. Every time the plot begins to establish a rule, the film gleefully breaks it four frames later. Logic isn’t the problem — supernatural horror rarely plays by reality’s book — but narrative integrity is non-negotiable. The Wailing can’t decide what story it’s telling, so it keeps changing the rules instead of deepening the mystery.
The result is a three-hour séance of red herrings sprinting in circles. One moment the Japanese stranger is the villain; then he’s not. Then he is again. Then maybe the shaman’s evil, or the mysterious woman in white, or possibly everyone. Instead of tension, we get fatigue. Instead of insight, we get “gotcha!” twists that feel less like revelations and more like the director repainting the chessboard mid-game.
Worse, the tone stumbles all over itself. The early sections flirt with slapstick — villagers arguing, the cop tripping over corpses — as if we’ve wandered into a dark comedy. Later, the film demands we take its metaphysical angst seriously. The clash isn’t clever; it’s incoherent. Parasite and Memories of Murder managed tonal balance because their humor served the horror. Here, the comedy undercuts it.
By the final act, when the exorcism drums reach fever pitch and the symbolism tries to masquerade as profundity, I was less terrified than tired. The Wailing doesn’t earn its ambiguity; it hides behind it. The film wants you to mistake opacity for depth, confusion for complexity, and exhaustion for awe.
It’s beautifully shot — I’ll give it that. The mountains drip atmosphere, the rain feels alive, and the performances are strong. But visuals alone can’t patch a story that keeps rewriting its own theology. Horror thrives on internal logic: once the rules are set, the fear of watching them play out is what gets under your skin. The Wailing refuses to play fair, and so nothing means anything.
I came for existential horror and found narrative gaslighting. For all its chanting and thunder, The Wailing has the spiritual weight of a wet script.
A two-and-a-half-hour ghost story where the scariest thing is the runtime. The Wailing is for people who like their horror mysterious because even the director doesn’t know what’s happening.
The film opens with promise: an isolated village, a mysterious illness, a bumbling cop whose life begins to unravel. The setup hints at slow-burn existential dread — the kind that seeps under your skin and makes you question what’s real. Unfortunately, what follows isn’t dread; it’s narrative whiplash. Every time the plot begins to establish a rule, the film gleefully breaks it four frames later. Logic isn’t the problem — supernatural horror rarely plays by reality’s book — but narrative integrity is non-negotiable. The Wailing can’t decide what story it’s telling, so it keeps changing the rules instead of deepening the mystery.
The result is a three-hour séance of red herrings sprinting in circles. One moment the Japanese stranger is the villain; then he’s not. Then he is again. Then maybe the shaman’s evil, or the mysterious woman in white, or possibly everyone. Instead of tension, we get fatigue. Instead of insight, we get “gotcha!” twists that feel less like revelations and more like the director repainting the chessboard mid-game.
Worse, the tone stumbles all over itself. The early sections flirt with slapstick — villagers arguing, the cop tripping over corpses — as if we’ve wandered into a dark comedy. Later, the film demands we take its metaphysical angst seriously. The clash isn’t clever; it’s incoherent. Parasite and Memories of Murder managed tonal balance because their humor served the horror. Here, the comedy undercuts it.
By the final act, when the exorcism drums reach fever pitch and the symbolism tries to masquerade as profundity, I was less terrified than tired. The Wailing doesn’t earn its ambiguity; it hides behind it. The film wants you to mistake opacity for depth, confusion for complexity, and exhaustion for awe.
It’s beautifully shot — I’ll give it that. The mountains drip atmosphere, the rain feels alive, and the performances are strong. But visuals alone can’t patch a story that keeps rewriting its own theology. Horror thrives on internal logic: once the rules are set, the fear of watching them play out is what gets under your skin. The Wailing refuses to play fair, and so nothing means anything.
I came for existential horror and found narrative gaslighting. For all its chanting and thunder, The Wailing has the spiritual weight of a wet script.
A two-and-a-half-hour ghost story where the scariest thing is the runtime. The Wailing is for people who like their horror mysterious because even the director doesn’t know what’s happening.
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