In the pantheon of Korean possession-horror media, director Na Hong-jin’s 2016 film The Wailing ( Goksung ) shares an uncanny kinship with another slept-on entry in the genre. Sure, it’s got the usual fixings: a doe-eyed hero, a cynical side character not long for this world, a wise shaman, some sort of demon, and the unlucky family member the protagonist is tasked with saving from spiritual ruin. But like Jang Jae-hyun’s 2024 film Exhuma, The Wailing takes these familiar hallmarks and injects them with real postcolonial trauma—Japan as the x-factor in its paranoia-soaked horror—transforming it into one of the most haunting cinematic experiences, even if you are divorced from the cultural splash zone of its deep-seated dread and prejudice.

The setting of T he Wailing, like

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