Watched The Wailing tonight. I liked it, but had to go read some Korean message boards to make sense of some of it and confirm some suspicions. I love foreign films, but sometime my ignorance of certain cultural stuff can make things a tad confusing.
Korean films often have an odd feel to em. A LOT of em have this bizarre mix of goofy humor with the serious, dramatic/horror elements. You get that here in the first quarter/half. You get a lot of that in another great horror flick from there, The Host. They frequently just can't seem to resist mixing genres, and it isn't done the way western filmmakers will do black/dark comedy/horror ala American Werewolf in London, it instead just feels like a very crude and jarring smashing of two diffeerent types of movies together.
I don't think anything cultural threw me for a loop when it comes to the plot though, the things that bothered/confused me were....
SPOILERS
The biggest thing i didn't get is why the japanese guy seemed to grow weak and seemingly nearly die when the shaman performed his ceremony. If they were workin together, what gives? I can't make any sense out of that whatsoever. I read one theory involving the two pictures in the japanese guys shrine, of a man and a woman, suggesting that those are relating to him and the guardian ghost. If they come as a pair, and the shamans ceremoney was meant to remove/weaken the female guardian ghost, then perhaps it would also weaken the other half..the eveil japanese guy. That's total guesswork though as nothing in the movie itself supports it in any way. That's about the only thing i've come across that seems to work at all when it comes to an explanation though, unless something went completely over my head.
I also didn't care for the japanese guys reaction to the body in the car that was zombified. It had appeared as though he were trying to prevent it from turning into a zombie, and his reaction to it seemed distressed that it had been reanimated. Both this and the above felt to me like the director was unfairly misdirecting me. Both of these sequences were the biggest reason why i was starting to believe the jap wasn't the villain, so for them to end up feeling so manipulative and forced was kinda lame.
I also didn't grasp why the female ghost(who fucking SUCKED at her job as a gaurdian, haha good lord so inept) told the protagonist that the reason this was happening is cuz he had sinned and tried to kill the japanese guy. Uh huh? The offense agiainst his family and daughter had started longggg before that.
There's some neat little subtle things littered throughout the film that are pretty cool. For example, when we first encounter the female ghost, she's repeatedly throwing rocks at the cop. I've read some folks interpret the odd behavior as a tell that this is the good character in the movie, "let thou who is without sin cast the first stone". Not sure if that was the directors intent, but it makes sense and is pretty neat i think.
That ending was fucking phenomenal though, so intense and the payoff in that cave, holy shit, unforgetable. Def one of the most effective and best endings in horror movie history i think, fucking brilliant. I can forgive some of the nonsensical aspects of the plot and even potential holes due to how that finale was executed. Was on the edge of my seat not knowing who to believe, and then on the edge of my seat hoping the dad would make the right decision. So fucking grim and nightmarish, awesome.
end spoilers
It's the type of horror flick that keeps growing on me after i watched it. Something like Conjuring is fun as hell in the moment while i'm watching it, maybe for a night or two afterwards(that fucking nun in the 2nd one haha, can't help but imagine it at the end of your hallway), but its scares are superficial and i don't find myself pondering it much afterwards. Stuff like The Wailing and The Witch as well are different, i can't get those out of my head for quite some time afterwards(especially the Witch). Even when i'm not trying to think about em, i find them creeping their way back into my thoughts.