The Wailing

Confirming South Korean cinema’s ongoing mastery of elevated genre films that take familiar narrative tropes into chilling new territory, Na Hong-jin’s twist-heavy rural horror epic—a box-office smash when it was released—combines elements of police procedural with generous dollops of shamanic folklore and Biblical symbolism. Kwak Do-won plays a bumbling detective investigating a spate of ritual killings in a sleepy mountain village in Na’s gripping, nerve-jangling dance with the devil.