Notable Cast: Ester Expósito, Mathilde Ollivier, Malena
Villa, Claudia Roset, José Luis Ferrer, Lia Lois, Sonia Almarcha, Tomás del
Estal, Lautaro Bettoni, Alex Monner
The entire arthouse horror aspect of pairing
"haunting" and "trauma" has now become a staple of the
genre, but The Wailing approaches it in a fascinating way. The film
essentially tells its tale through three women through two different time
frames. It's a slow-burn narrative that focuses on how this haunting builds
from the mundane to the manic, and on not being up front with its terrors, but
seeding them under the skin and in the folds of the brain. Sure, it’s the kind
of horror film that seems fairly par-for-the-course now in a post-A24 era, but
don’t sell The Wailling short - it has a voice, and it's executed impressively.
The Wailing is a film that might be compared to other
haunting/trauma films, like the socio-hauntings of It Follows or the
technological horrors of The Ring, but it wholly wants to present itself
as a slice-of-life film. It just happens to feature various characters who are
terrorized by an unseen horror that creeps up through an outside lens (in this
case, the camera), thereby highlighting the technological aspect that was so
prevalent in late 90s and early 00s J-horror. However, the film certainly takes
its time with each of its characters as they go about their lives, and with how
each one eventually succumbs to the horror of this ‘curse’ passed down to them.
The process of getting there may be fairly mundane to some, with its incredibly
meticulous pacing and seemingly meandering character beats, but it all fits
with the complexity of its themes and the humanity that is tragically lost as
the horror grows closer.
