The Wailing

When watching a horror movie, the things that can be expected are as follows:
• Most of the time, its has very dark lighting, to add darkness and mystery
• Lot of jump scares are placed, to take audience by surprise
• The music is very ominous most of the time, making the watcher anxious
• Most of the time, there would always be an abandon house where a murder has taken place, and for some reason a family buys that house
• There will also have so stereotypical characters (e.g.: strong jock guy, the blonde, comic black guy)
• Creepy kids
• Dead characters that can only be killed by performing specific things (like to kill zombie you must shoot, cut the head off)
I got this idea mostly from very old horror movies I watched (grudge, the Wailing), and some clips of old horror movies in social media (Friday the 13th, the shining).
The horror movie that I recently watched was “The Wailing”, a Korean movie directed by Na Hong-jin. The movie is a mixture of horror and mystery element. The movie uses a very high contrast, low lighting when the scenes are done in the village and high contrast with more light when the scenes are done in a proper lit place such as in the forest to keep people in edge of their seat and make the environment more ominous and eviller.

Every time there is a very tense moment, it does a very close up shot, showing all characters emotions and features in detail. It also makes sure to show the background of the character and interchange the closeup with boom shots.

The movie has kind of an open ending with lot of foreshadowing of what the character are, whom to trust, who is evil and who is not which are easy to miss. For me this movie has 4 main characters, the Japanese guy, Jong-goo (main character), the lady in white dress (Moo-mung), and the Shamna. The movie gives is about whom the main character should trust, the Shaman or the woman in he white.
A pivotal scene in the movie is when Jong-goo’s daughter becomes possessed so a shaman is called for help. The Shaman performs a very powerful hex, which shows us that he is hurting the Japanese guy. At this point both Jong-goo and the audience suspect the Japanese guy is the evil and Shaman to be a hero. But things starts to change when the ritual fails as Jong interfere with the ritual as he could not bear painful scream from his daughter. After this we are shown the woman in white hurting the Shaman and tell him to get out of her village which intensifies the mystery of who actually is good or evil.

By the end, it becomes clear as the Japanese man and Shaman both were evil and the woman in white was a protective spirit. The shaman was performing ritual to remove the woman’s protection and not to kill the devil. This scene was hinted when the Shaman first appears in village and destroys a pot of vinegar with dead crow in it. Initially this act seems like a cruse from the Japanese guy but later reveals the shaman’s true goal.