The Wailing (2016) - Explained

THE WAILING EXPLAINED 2016 (MY VERSION)

Story intro: Jong-Goo is a police sergeant awakened early morning with a call about a double homicide. When he arrives at the scene, he finds the family's been stabbed to death by a young man who sits on the side and his skin is covered in boils. He finds out a dried flower hanging in the door. The conclusion made by police and doctors is they are poisoned by a wild mushroom. A  Few days later a story pops up that a mysterious Japanese guy is behind all this who lives in the mountains.

Second murder scene - Murderer was a woman and detective investigates about it and from a coffee shop guy he learns that Japanese guy tries to rape the same women once and after that she lost her mind and walks naked in the night. While in the duty near the murder place detective meets with the white lady who throws rocks to his side. Later she tells him that Japanese guy is the reason for all this murder case.

Detective's partner Cho told Jong-Goo during the investigation that a guy named Byeong Jae has seen the Japanese guy in devil form and they went to see him. After collecting the information they all went to the mountains where Byeong Jae has seen the Japanase guy first time. Unfortunately Byeong Jae was hit by a thunder. A few days later, Jong's daughter shows the same symptoms of disease.

He and his partner went to the mountain again with the help of a priest and finds some vital clues about this mysterious things happening in the village. His daughter's condition gets worse, so he went to Japanese guy's home(2nd time) with anger and kills his dog. Next Jong-Goo was unable to move because the Japanese guy did a  black magic and hang the dog in front of the detective's house. His mother in law hired a shaman(ll-Gwang) to help them from this situation.

Now we will discuss about the character's and what they did.

JONG-GOO (DETECTIVE):

He and his partner Cho visits the Japanese guy's house (1st time) with a priest. Cho was possessed by the evil spirit and later kills his wife.

He stops the exorcism conducted by Shaman in his house (After effect shaman starts to change). He and his friends goes to the Japanese guy's home (3rd time) to kill him and end up with Park Chon Bae (the driver zombie).

They kill him and spot the Japanese guy near it and Japanese guy escapes from them. While heading to home there car accidentally hits the Japanese guy and they throw him down the cliff.

Now the detective did another sin. When he reaches his home, his daughter is fully captured by the evil spirit. Shaman calls him and tells the white lady is the evil. In the final scenes, white lady tells him not to enter the house and wait till the rooster crows three times. But he doesn't believe it and she touches his hand and he saw a flashback of victims dress that white lady wears in some scenes and also seen his daughter's headpin in the road.

Finally, he believes that the shaman was right. He enters the house and his daughter kills the family members. The evil spirit already influenced him so his daughter leaves him and sits outside the house.

WHITE LADY:

From the starting of the movie, she builds many traps in order to catch the Japanese guy. The dried flower trap is the one that am talking about which was found in the first murder scene by Jong-Goo. She was wearing Park Chon Bae's shirt (the zombie driver) when she meets Jong-Goo for the first time.

Park Chon Bae was one of the murderers of a crime scene (He murdered his whole family). She tried to help him too, Unfortunately, that attempt failed. 

She tries to stop the detectives to not enter the mountain. The thunder thing was her trick. If they enter an evil place, then its hard to control their mind.

Another trick was to counter attack the exorcism did by Japanese guy and succeed in making the driver zombie to go against the Japanese guy. Like Japanese guy & Shaman, she also collects the belongings of people whom the evil spirit targets in order to help them. She tries to help Hyo-Jin(Daughter of Jong-Goo) and that's why she put crow in the pot to protect(which was later destroyed by Shaman). After the exorcism battle she passes through the Japanese guy's house and watch him lying on the ground.

Next day she saw Japanese guy hiding in the mountains and he is weak so he runs away. She doesn't believe shaman that's why she attacks him when he came to see Jong-Goo. After the exorcism conducted by shaman, he starts to look like a devil. In the final scenes she tells the detective that he did some sins like throwing the Japanese guy and some other. The only way to protect his family is to obey her instructions. Detective disagrees the instructions and enters his house. The trap setted by the white lady dries and she cries because of another failed attempt to trap the evil.

JAPANESE GUY:

He curses an item that belongs to the person he targets. After that, the person suffers from a skin disease and begins to act crazy. The sinned persons and dead bodies photos were taken by him lately.

He does an exorcism in order to rob the spirit of a dead body( driver lying in the vehicle) and gets hurt by the process because the white lady did another trick.

After that, he became weak and that's the reason he cries while hiding in the mountains when the detective and his friends tries to attack him.

After detective enters his house the Japanese guy retains his strength and shows the priest his true nature.

Another interesting thing about the film is the river fishing first scene. There are two hooks and one worm in his hands. The concept lies in it the two hooks are Japanese guy and white lady. The worm refers to the village people. The villagers decide their own faith by choosing the right and wrong sides.

SHAMAN:

He is hired by the family to do an exorcism. His intensions are good but his exorcism always make the situations difficult. He is the one who destroys the pot trick of white lady (pot trick was white lady's idea to protect the child from Japanese guy).

The exorcism done by shaman was to protect the girl from Japanese guy. Jong-Goo stops his exorcism and that negatively affect him.

He was trying to enter the detectives house where the white lady already setted a trap for the evil spirit. In order to prevent him from entering the house she did a trick on him to vomit blood.

He then return to his home and checks if he is ok with the candle lights. One of it sheds and a crow falls which makes him clear that he is hunted by an evil spirit.

He calls the detective and tells him the white lady is the evil spirit. The fear of the white lady's attack encounters him and it was very easy for evil spirit to control him now. In the end scene, he starts to work for an evil spirit.

(N.B - Whatever ideas come to you while you  watch the film, they're yours. This film has infinite plot and each time you watch it, you will come up with new stories.)