The Wailing

The Wailing (곡성, 2016) is a Korean horror mystery you can watch online on iFILM. It was written and directed by Na Hong-jin, the filmmaker behind The Chaser and The Yellow Sea, and it is his darkest work yet.

Something inexplicable takes hold of the mountain village of Gokseong. Villagers break out in sores, lose their minds and turn on their own families with an axe, and a string of killings follows. Local cop Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) shrugs off the rumors at first — bad mushrooms, maybe, or the Japanese stranger who moved into the woods. Then the sickness reaches his young daughter. He bounces between an expensive shaman, an eerie woman by the river and his own dread, and every answer only deepens the knot.

For two and a half hours the film refuses to tell you who to trust, and it never lets your footing settle before the end. Na Hong-jin folds a rural whodunit, a shaman's ritual and raw horror together until genre stops being a clue. It won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival and stands among the high points of Korean horror. Stream The Wailing (2016) online on iFILM.