In the pantheon of Korean occupation-horror media, director Na Hong-jin’s 2016 film lamentation ,goksung) shares a unique kinship with another slip-on entry in the genre. Sure, it’s got the usual stuff: a doe-eyed protagonist, an eccentric character who doesn’t belong in this world, a wise exorcist, some kind of demon, and unlucky members of the family the protagonist is tasked with saving from spiritual ruin. But like Jang Jae-hyun’s 2024 film Exhuma, The Welling Takes these familiar identities and infuses them with genuine post-colonial trauma – with Japan as the
setting of TeaHe is moaning, Like any good horror movie worth your taste, It’s a quiet, isolated rural area where everyone knows everyone. Here, an inept and comfortably lazy policeman named Jong-gu (Kwak Do-won), whom even his coworkers dread working with, suddenly becomes important at work when a mysterious plague plagues a South Korean village. Everyone knows that whatever disease is engulfing people, it has made them indulge in rampant violence, killed their loved ones and left them mentally unconscious. It’s a case Jong-goo is ill-equipped to solve, but he is forced to use his deductive abilities to unravel the strange phenomena occurring in his village – no matter how accidental and unfortunate it may be when it claims his daughter. And all signs point to the supernatural arrival of a Japanese foreigner, dubbed “the Japanese Man” (played by Jun Kunimura), in their village. But her presence, no matter how terrifying, is only the tip of the iceberg of suspects behind a secret conspiracy in the quiet town.
When all the horrors come rushing to Jong-gu’s door, the secret is revealed The Wailing’The mysteries intertwine, causing its uneasiness to seep from the screen and into the viewer’s consciousness. along the way, lamentation Doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares to sell that sensorium of scares rising to the surface. Instead, it endures. It hangs on shots. This allows fear to develop in the distance as a scary object turns just far enough to see you, then moves toward you at its own pace. It’s as apt as any metaphor lamentationThe measured speed of. It creates fear not through noise, but through presence. and its In fact good at it.
At the center of the storm is Jong-goo – a bumbling policeman at the center of it all – who knows, along with the audience, that he’s on the right track, running this case not as a series of drug addicts but as something beyond a vast collection of empirical evidence. It doesn’t do him any favors that he’s running away from a random nightmare of a Japanese guy, which makes his man-who-cried-wolf case even more dangerous, even before you consider his blatant prejudice towards the stranger which is bad for the credibility of his over-interrogation.
There is a layered one in all this Shogun-Like conflict over language. Jong-goo repeatedly hurls abuse at the Japanese man, who he’s 99 percent sure is behind everything – a choice that’s completely his, even as his fellow officers hesitate to follow his marching orders. All the while, a priest, clearly in over his head, acts as translator between Joon-gu – who is considering recurring nightmares as evidence – and the Japanese man, who is clearly tired of having his cultural solitude disturbed. The language barrier becomes another source of confusion, another veil between truth and perception. lamentation Enjoy playing themes and motifs.
The film’s ominous atmosphere is a credit to the collective strengths of its cast: Kunimura as the mysterious outsider, Chun Woo-hee as the terrifying “mysterious woman”, and Hwang Jung-min as the cunning sorcerer, whose rituals lead to yet another crack into the chaos. His performance is a boon to the film’s triumphant, baffling paranoia. The audience is right there with Jong-goo as Peter Parker no way homeThe spirit of the spider is haunting the revolving room, where people are smiling at his face while, perhaps, wishing him well. It’s the kind of paranoia-inducing horror where the danger could be staring you dead in the face or helping you find the keys, even if they’re the one who hid them.
It is the friction between certainty and doubt, prejudice and paranoia, that makes it lamentation Such an entertaining entry into the Possession horror canon. It connects so many spinning plates that don’t fit together: part crime drama, part embarrassing fever dream. And yet, it happens. In a neat and devastating way.
Its cinematography is remarkable. Each frame winds up leaving all its terrifying, beautiful and untouched imagination on the screen. All this in an effort to give rise to a horror whose face is asymmetric, gradually shrouded in fear and juxtaposed against the oppressive calm of the countryside, where danger may lurk among the hills or inside the unkempt houses of people around whom you once felt safe.
lamentation This isn’t “advanced horror” or “cultural horror,” the way fans often label films that avoid scares or engaging in uncomfortable politics. It’s a mysterious third thing that has become new: reality. Hong-jin’s 2016 film unabashedly explores how prejudice, ego, and social standing can cloud judgment – especially when one is expected to easily and repeatedly solve a mystery bigger than oneself. And somehow, despite Jong-goo being a scoundrel, you sympathize with him. Obviously, not for racism, but he is a hero in his daughter’s eyes. Not because he’s a good cop (he’s not), but because he’s her father. In the eyes of the child, father is God. And her fear of failing is so deep, it permeates through the screen and seeps into the audience’s bones – even when the puppet image of her daughter stands at the door like Death itself.
By the time the film reaches its Orpheus-esque finale, many of its grotesque horrors have already sunk beneath the surface. What is left is the undertow; A giant wave threatens to pull Jung-goo under the spectators. And then, quietly, it leaves you with a feeling that echoes louder than any scream: Evil does not have to be insidious. Sometimes it just casts the bait, not knowing what it will catch, swallowing whatever bites on the line. Figuring out whether that evil is a perceived threat or a real one is where things get messy for Jong-goo. lamentation Such a gem of a horror movie.
I’m not arrogant enough to claim that I have it completely figured out lamentation-Or exhumaFor that matter – and their shared excavation of postcolonial trauma between Japan and South Korea. But what persists is unambiguous: a subject that acts like a one-way mirror – universal in its reflection, and personal in its effect. lamentation Picks away that crust, weaves apprehension and disorientation into something more intimate. For all its messiness, it succeeds not only as horror but also as a deeply affecting mystery crime drama. This is a movie that haunts you long after the credits roll, not because it screams, but because it speaks clearly. And what it says is horrifying.
lamentation Streaming on Hulu.
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