Why Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing Is the Ultimate Mystery Thriller

Na Hong-jin has always operated on his own wavelength. His track record includes The Chaser and The Yellow Sea, which cemented his status as a titan of modern South Korean cinema long before his project Hope. Although his return scales up into sci-fi spectacle, its underlying DNA resonates with his earlier work. Na remains focused on ordinary people dragged into mysteries far beyond their comprehension.

The crown jewel of those previous thrillers is undeniably The Wailing, the last feature-length film Na directed before Hope. The rain-slicked mystery opens in a remote village where a string of gruesome murders leaves the local police scrambling. Anchoring the chaos is Jong-goo, played by Kwak Do-won, a bumbling police officer forced to confront a force far larger than he can handle. What masquerades as a standard procedural gradually evolves into a supernatural nightmare. Na embeds the occult so deeply into the fabric of his world that viewers instinctively try to rationalize it.

Environmental storytelling remains one of Na’s sharpest tools. Hope features sweeping drone shots of verdant forests and mountains, and The Wailing similarly uses its landscape to breathe life into the narrative. The film opens on the calm banks of South Korea’s Seomjin River, where towering mountains and dense forests sit under the soft orange glow of morning. Na focuses first on natural beauty before switching to a Japanese man, played by Jun Kunimura, fishing in the river. This fisherman’s lingering presence becomes one of the film’s greatest assets.

An overriding sense of duty wrapped in tragedy grounds the occult terror. Jong-goo is a tired family man utterly ill-equipped for the unimaginable conspiracy awaiting him and his family. Much like the desperation driving Hope, the village police force at the center of The Wailing feels overworked and under-resourced. Officers struggle to maintain order against uncontrollable circumstances while a fierce rain beats down upon them.

The gloomy weather adopts the visual grammar of a grimy noir even as the film violently careens between horror, comedy, and folklore. Tonal instability is another strength, pivoting from grotesque body horror to unexpected comedy due to the incompetence of Jong-goo and his partner Oh Seong-bok, played by Son Gang-guk. These jarring shifts make the world feel authentic and deeply human, heightening the impact of the horror when it strikes.

The mystery culminates in a finale that lands with devastating force. Na orchestrates a climax where three disparate storylines collide in real time, placing the audience in the frantic headspace of Jong-goo. Viewers are forced to decide who to trust as an enigmatic woman issues cryptic warnings and a rooster’s crow acts as a ticking clock for survival. The movie pulls off a bait-and-switch, making the audience certain of one reality before brutally pivoting to another. This sequence ties directly back to the film’s opening citation of Luke 24:38–39:

See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

Fans of South Korean cinema will naturally place The Wailing alongside Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder, another genre-blending mystery based on real events. Both films escalate a rural procedural into something bleak, centering on investigators out of their depth, communities buckling under paranoia, and mysteries that grow more sickening as the truth emerges. Distinct echoes of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure also appear in how Na presents evil as an eerie contagion seeping into the ordinary world.

The Wailing stands as a companion piece to Hope. It trades Alien-inspired action set pieces for a darker, slow-built mystery that pulls audiences deeper into terrifying secrets. Na refuses to be confined to a single box, demanding complex narrative mysteries that blend action, comedy, and horror. The Wailing remains a razor-sharp presentation of that vision.

The Wailing is streaming on Philo.

Source: Polygon