Monstrous National Allegory: The Making of Monstrous Otherness in Na Hong-jin's The Wailing

The Wailing as a Zombie Film

the wailing, or goksung in the original korean title, Na Hong-jin's third feature-length film, released in 2016, was instantly recognized by viewers and critics across the globe as a contemporary cult classic. The film tells the story of Jong-gu, a rural police sergeant who is trying to save his daughter from forces of demonic possession that descend on his quiet small village, gripping locals in a murderous frenzy. With the cause of this terror perpetually shrouded in mystery, the sergeant's investigation and rescue efforts collapse, which propels him and other villagers to the edge of madness and spiritual crisis. The story of supernatural phenomena and spiritual crisis proves to be an ideal springboard for the director's skills for interweaving themes and images across different genres, ranging from religious cult, serial-killer whodunnit, and zombie-cluttered, blood-spewing gore to comedy and serious philosophical drama. For Joshua Winning, The Wailing mixes "a horror story about human fallibility and a slapstick zombie-ghost-infection thriller that echoes the likes of The Exorcist (1973) but always feels original." A similar observation is made by Philip Brown, who calls it an "ambitious yet wacko genre mash-up picture … freely mixing tone … though always pushing them to extremes."

Clearly recognizable is the way that the generic stylization of actions and characters delivers finely tuned set pieces, much to the fetishist pleasure of genre aficionados. Among the most-talked-about sequences is a supernatural duel between two contending shamans performing highly formalized rituals for exchanging fatal strikes, which can be considered an elaborate tribute to religious cult classics like The Exorcist and The Omen (1976) that hinge on the dramatic showdown between good and evil. Equally impressive sequences of zombie blood fest occasionally crop up as well, to suggest a loosely defined threat of mysterious infection, which is a clear sign of the film's belongingness in the worldwide subcultural attraction of zombie cinema. Many of the reviews and articles about the film are indeed cast in the language and sensibilities of cult appreciation, securing its place in the pantheon of contemporary cult classics: "The Wailing likely won't be a theatrical hit anywhere other than in Asia. However, cult status is a whole different ballgame and there's a good chance that genre nuts will embrace and dissect this cinematic oddity for quite some time" (Brown).

Equally discernible is how this stylistic move for worldwide appeal is woven into a rich array of distinct local specificities deployed to convey the realism of Goksung, a rural village in South Cholla province, where the film is set. For David Fowlie, the power of the film comes from the way in which its generic intermixing plays out against "a real world setting," an assemblage of "several other South Korean towns and regions in order to capture the required look of specific locations or scenes." Thanks to the director's effort to sustain "the naturalism and believability of the locations," the visual shock of violence and horror moves beyond the film's cult appeal in suggesting the possibility of social or cultural resonance that such a physically and emotionally harrowing experience brings to the small village. An example of this realism is that the ordinary villagers, while tragically falling under spells of demonic possession, all still manage to assume their local mannerisms, complete with vernacular idioms and trappings, which forcibly highlights the point of contact in the viewers' appreciation between the globalization of generic sensibilities and the localized tenor of communal lifestyles and culture.

What is particularly relevant to this article is how this mix of global and local in Na Hong-jin can be seen as a meaningful point of contrast to the styles opted by other celebrated film-makers in Korea. At a time when the spotlight of Korean cinema is dominated by a small elite group of auteurs frequenting international film festivals as nominees or judges, Na's entry into this prestigious company marks in my view a new trend in the rise...