The Wailing

Reno

December 14, 2016

8/10

**A father's struggle to see his daughter to get well.** A new film from the writer, director of 'The Chaser' and 'The Yellow Sea'. This time its a horror-thriller that focused on a rural police officer who witnesses a series of strange events escalating fears among its people. The original title was 'Goksung', which means the name of the village where this story takes place. This film is specially for those who like Korean films. But I'm sure that everyone would enjoy it equally. Very typica…

Key-Si

June 18, 2018

5/10

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 b…

Kai

December 21, 2019

10/10

I don't often use the word masterpiece. I've seen 1,040 films in my life, totalling 1,549 hours of filmography. There's maybe 7 I would label a masterpiece with full usage and definition of the word. The Wailing is the eighth film of one thousand and forty films I very willingly, gladly and without hesitation give the title of Masterpiece to. I'm not too big of a fan of Asian supernatural horror. Whilst I very much enjoy it and give most films a pretty decent average rating, I find a lot o…

The runtime is a grueling 2 hours and 36 minutes. A warning that there is a good amount of **animal abuse**. The first half is pretty light hearted compared to the last half. It's a really befuddling piece. It's hard to tell who is bad or good and it feels like parts are gone over too frequently. If you like Korean films and portrayals of shamanism you will enjoy it for sure. As far as horror goes, it's not very scary in a slasher type of way and is more of a psychological one.

Dr_Nostromo

February 10, 2026

7/10

66/100 A bumbling police Sergeant finds himself well out of his depth while investigating the mass murder of families by one of the family members. And now his daughter seems to be possessed. A tense, unique story that grabs your attention and doesn't let go, despite a prolonged first half. Keeping our protagonist as confused as the viewer over what is right, wrong, good, evil, are there demons, ghosts, witches, until the final moments elevates the tension to overwhelming levels. Acting is ex…