Na Hong-jin
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Filmography
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The Exorcist (1973)
Directed by William Friedkin
influenced The Wailing (2016)
Characters Visuals Themes
She swears, she ridicules her father (Kwak Do-won), she makes grotesque drawings, but—in a way—it’s creepier because it’s still her voice, not a demon’s grotesque voice like in The Exorcist.
Rather than playing a game of spot-the-allusion, Na is digging into the religious fabric of a country where old traditions still hold sway, and the long sequence where a shaman (Hwang Jung-min) attempts to perform a “death hex” against a marauding spirit to the pounding soundtrack of drums feels excitingly closer to ethnography than The Exorcist.
This ferociously full-tilt horror-mystery hybrid carries echoes aplenty from the Western horror canon, with nods to The Exorcist, The Shining (in a mesmeric aerial shot following a car along a twisty, lushly forested mountain road), and Poltergeist—if only because The Wailing echoes that film’s accumulative frenzy, crazily piling up one damned (and I do mean damned) thing after another.
At the same time, he puts western tropes from “The Exorcist,” “The Evil Dead” and even “Outbreak” through the blender, but the cryptic denouement, which delves into the abysmally dark cave of the human psyche, is pure Polanski.
Fitting neatly into the festival’s cannibal phenomena (there were five cannibalism-related pictures in the festival), “The Wailing” borrows ever so gently from “The Exorcist” to weave an intricate tale of horror that is part who-(or what)-done-it.
The comparisons to Bong Joon-ho’s “Memories of Murder” are warranted, but “The Wailing” can also be described as “The Exorcist” having a demonic, vomit-spewing baby with “The Departed” with Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart” overseeing the bastard offspring’s circumcision.
Memories of Murder (2003)
Directed by Bong Joon Ho
influenced The Wailing (2016), The Chaser (2008)
Themes Characters Visuals Plot
In the spirit of other South Korean films like Memories of Murder , The Host , I Saw the Devil , and Park Chan-wook's early work, among others, The Wailing thrives on genre crosspollination and tonal hyperbole, particularly a destabilizing contrast of broad comedy with ultraviolent portentousness.
It’s a blender of all your favorite recent genre films from Korea, there’s the bumbling but competently-passable detective, à la Bong Joon-ho‘s Memories of Murder, there’s some comic relief from the people overseeing the fallout of a deathly crisis that’s gripped the town, à la Bong’s The Host, there’s an exorcism that beats up a demon about as bad as Oldboy did in Park Chan-wook‘s Oldboy.
Bong mined similar hick-cop sight gags in Memories of Murder, but where that film’s search for an elusive serial killer interrogated institutional and individual frailties, The Wailing remains focused on a completely external threat.
But there are also echoes of a great South Korean policier, Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder (03), in the sense we get of an enigma that becomes ever more unfathomable until we’re gazing into an abyss of sheer delirium.
While it is reminiscent of Bong Joon-ho's "Memories of Murder" with its comical cops, awful crimes, rural locations and incessant rain, "The Wailing" adds a supernatural aspect which Hong-Jin keeps twisting, throwing us and his protagonist off balance until the very last moments.
The comparisons to Bong Joon-ho’s “Memories of Murder” are warranted, but “The Wailing” can also be described as “The Exorcist” having a demonic, vomit-spewing baby with “The Departed” with Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart” overseeing the bastard offspring’s circumcision.
Mr. Na enjoys overt directorial misdirection as well; early on, the scenes that end with Jong-gu waking in a panic from a bad dream are numerous enough to remind one of Luis Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.”
Local gossip settles on a recent arrival, an older Japanese man crudely referred to as "The Jap" (Jun Kunimura, of Audition and Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2), who lives in an isolated cabin with his dog, but Jong-Gu is increasingly distracted by trouble at home: Hyo-Jin, normally an outgoing, fun-loving child, begins acting out in ways that strongly suggest either mental illness or virulent, early-onset teenage-jerk syndrome.
He begins hearing odd tales about a Japanese stranger (Kunimura Jun, "Kill Bill") as more and more eerie occurrences plague his village and his own daughter Hyo-jin (Kim Hwan-hee) succumbs to "The Wailing."
Kunimura Jun (Kill Bill: Volume 1) is likewise excellent as the Japanese stranger, despite not having much dialogue.
But the authorities’ feeble effort to blame these gruesome events on a toxic batch of mushrooms doesn’t last long, and local attention turns back toward “the Jap” — seriously, that’s what he’s called in the subtitles — a mysterious old man who lives alone in the forest, played by veteran Japanese actor Jun Kunimura (seen in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies).
This ferociously full-tilt horror-mystery hybrid carries echoes aplenty from the Western horror canon, with nods to The Exorcist, The Shining (in a mesmeric aerial shot following a car along a twisty, lushly forested mountain road), and Poltergeist—if only because The Wailing echoes that film’s accumulative frenzy, crazily piling up one damned (and I do mean damned) thing after another.
At its best, the film resembles a collision between Na Hong-jin’s The Yellow Sea and Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, filtered through the splattery comic chaos of Evil Dead II.
Director of Photography Hong Kyung-pyo ("Snowpiercer") uses natural lighting and stylish camera work to complement Hong-Jin's vision.
His work on Snowpiercer was as successful at helping establish a natural lived-in quality, the bonus effect here is that The Wailing’s fantastical moments earn a real kick and a bonus element of discomforting reality.
He and his crew — particularly cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo ("Snowpiercer") and production designer Lee Hwo-kyung — also create a compelling and foreboding atmosphere that finds scares in the most everyday of places and scenarios.
Since the early aughts, South Korea has been one of the most prolific and exciting exporters of genre cinema, giving us such indelible gems as Oldboy, The Host, Snowpiercer, to name but a few.
The comparisons to Bong Joon-ho’s “Memories of Murder” are warranted, but “The Wailing” can also be described as “The Exorcist” having a demonic, vomit-spewing baby with “The Departed” with Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart” overseeing the bastard offspring’s circumcision.
In the spirit of other South Korean films like Memories of Murder , The Host , I Saw the Devil , and Park Chan-wook's early work, among others, The Wailing thrives on genre crosspollination and tonal hyperbole, particularly a destabilizing contrast of broad comedy with ultraviolent portentousness.
The Wailing‘s tone shifts to super serious and tacks on multiple different endings and rug pulls for another 40 minutes, à la Kim Jee-woon‘s I Saw the Devil.
Na Hong-jin continues to utilize the tense atmosphere found within his two previous films, but “The Wailing” has shades of Kim Jee-woon’s “I Saw the Devil,” which allows the film to explore violently haunting imagery.
Six years after Kim Jee-woon electrified audiences with his bleak serial killer thriller “I Saw the Devil,” one of his fellow Korean auteurs has replied with a riotously mangled supernatural horror film that asks with an impish grin: “Are you sure about that?” Already a monster hit back home, Na Hong-jin’s spellbinding and scatterbrained “The Wailing” is 156 minutes of demented occult nonsense that gradually begins to feel less like a linear scary story than that it does a ritualistic invocation of the antichrist.
The Wailing is also disturbingly gory, and at times on par with Kim Jee-won’s I Saw the Devil.
South Korea has proved fertile ground for genre films, from ruthless revengers such as I Saw the Devil and Oldboy to stranger fare like this year's terrific Train to Busan .
It’s fitting that this episode of Lanterns aired the same weekend that Na Hong-jin’s Hope hit U.S. cinemas. The rip-roaring South Korean creature feature unfolds with the same breakneck pace and small-town chaos that Hal and John are forced to deal with, in what might be one of the most adrenaline-fueled, action-packed, downright fun episodes of TV this year — all without sacrificing an inch of character-focus.
At the same time, he puts western tropes from “The Exorcist,” “The Evil Dead” and even “Outbreak” through the blender, but the cryptic denouement, which delves into the abysmally dark cave of the human psyche, is pure Polanski.
Films like Oldboy, Mother, I Saw the Devil, The Handmaiden and The Wailing – but a small cross-section of critically-acclaimed twisty and dark Korean imports – reveal the inner monologue of a country foisted repeatedly into rapid change.
All three concoct a devious scheme to oust the Park’s housekeeper Moon-gwang (Jeong-eun Lee, "Okja," "The Wailing"), inherited by the Parks from the home’s architect, to make way for mom Chung-sook (Hyae Jin Chang, "Secret Sunshine").
La película también es prueba contundente de que el cine coreano actualmente produce algunas de las voces más interesantes del séptimo arte en la actualidad, con esta siendo la parte alta de un movimiento al que han contribuido películas como “The Wailing”, “Train to Busan”, “The Handmaiden” y “Burning” en años recientes.
In a 1930's Korea under Japanese colonial rule, con man Count Fujiwara (Jung-woo Ha, "The Chaser") hires Korean pickpocket Sookee (Kim Tae-ri) to get a job at the secluded estate of the fragile Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee, "Right Now, Wrong Then").
Newcomer Kim Tae-ri stars as Sook-hee, a young Korean pickpocket who is chosen by her gang leader, Count Fujiwara ( Ha Jung-woo of Never Forget and The Chaser), to help him execute an elaborate long-term con to seduce, marry, and rob orphaned young heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee, No Tears for the Dead).
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
influenced by The Yellow Sea (2010)
Visuals
But unlike, say, any one sequence in a Transporter film, either of the Raid extravaganzas, the preposterously amazing Old Boy or The Yellow Sea, the “Crazy 88” climax of Kill Bill Vol. 1, or the Guggenheim ramp shootout in The International, Vaughn’s mayhem moves so fast that it’s hard to believe.
Perhaps you watch a ghost movie, even something as beautifully constructed as “The Conjuring,” and long for a version that’s less mechanical, where the rules don’t seem like they were made up on the spot.