21 Days of Spooky: The Wailing (Na Hong-jin, 2016)

Via Tumblr

21 Days of Spooky is not about pop culture that sets out to fright you with brain-eating, viscerae-hanging, slash-killing scenes, but with thoughts that linger and persist on your life long after you've watched them. Or are just downright creepy. Tonight's spooky: Na Hong-jin's The Wailing. Some spoilers ahead.

What's it about?: A small rural village in Korea is afflicted by a mysterious disease that makes people violent, followed by death. When the daughter of a local police officer start showing the symptoms, he sets out to find how to stop this strange plague.

I'll start this article by highlighting how this is possibly the best film of those selected for this edition of the feature. It's a slow-burning, absolute chiller tale of distrust and desperation. The distrust and desperation arrive in the form of Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won), the local police officer who gets the affliction back at home with his daughter, so now more than ever he has to find out what's killing the villagers before it gets to her. Could the culprit be a Japanese stranger that has just moved into town, or maybe the mysterious lady in white that roams around the village looking ominous as fuck?

The supernatural mixes with very serious real-life themes as the villagers immediately point at the Japanese stranger as the culprit, as he lives in a secluded shack with a guard dog and, well, he's Japanese. It doesn't take long for Jong-goo to break into the man's house unwarranted, and even much less to destroy the man's house once the daughter gets sick, retaliating bluntly when he discovers that the possible evidence of him being the cause of the illness has been burned, and even reaching to the point of killing the stranger's dog. Because that's definitely not gonna piss off the dude making the curse, amirite?

But, you see, here's the ticket: nobody knows if the stranger is actually the source of the affliction. The supposed evidence was discovered by another police officer who broke into the house, and now it's gone so we don't know if it really existed or it was something said to justify the racism against the Japanese man. And, to boot, the first person to point out the possibility of the stranger being the source is mysterious lady in white Moo-myeong (a name that literally means "no name"), who's pretty much a ghost of a person, if not a real ghost, and therefore much more prone to shoot curses at people.

As Jong-goo's daughter gets worse, his desperation ramps up; he knows that she's becoming an imminent danger with her violent outbursts, and to top that, she's going to die as well. His mother-in-law hires a shaman to perform an exorcism on the girl, but things get way out of hand as the ceremony is underway, and everything must be stopped. Not coincidentally, the stranger is seen performing a ritual at the same time of the exorcism, and Moo-myeong carries with her the personal items of some of the past victims. It has to be one of them, but which one? Maybe none, and we're misfiring in our pre-judgement?

The mob mentality prevails, and eventually Jong-goo and his friends head over to the stranger's shack and, after fighting one of the ill-violent villagers roaming around, find the Japanese man and straight-up kill him, disposing of his body swiftly and secretly. And the daughter seems to actually improve a bit. But then, after the shaman bumps into Moo-myeong, he starts vomiting blood and calls to tell Jong-goo he's killed the wrong man: the mysterious woman is a demon. Ruh-roh.

It's never justified to kill a man only because you suspect it can be related to something that's affecting you, because most of those times the suspicion comes from unfounded and/or indoctrinated beliefs, and there's a high chance you're making a huge mistake. Then again, when someone you love is in the line of fire, it's hard to keep the mind clear and realize that what you're doing is a truly horrible thing. By the time it dawns on you, it's too damn late. Sometimes the monster isn't out there, but within us, and there's nothing we can do to get rid of that evil.

As you can imagine, the film doesn't end in the "oops I killed a man just because he's different than me" coda, there's a whole lot of movie remaining. Because, you see, Moo-myeong might not actually be a demon after all. Who to believe? Who do YOU believe is the source of the affliction?

Tomorrow: This feature gets silly and somewhat serious with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's This Is The End.