The Wailing: the story that Na Hong-jin tells is at its best the more open-ended it is (thankfully, for the most part, it’s very much so), and, on the flip side, less interesting the more literal it gets. Still, the film navigates very well from funny to scary to heartbreaking. If by one hand, it is very tense and atmospheric (thanks to, in no small part, Jang Young-gyu’s musical score and Kim Sun-min’s editing, which is helped by the many moving parts, their roles never being clear), by the other, it’s easy to be touched by the characters’ dramas. The acting makes them very empathetic; Kwak Do-won nails down his character (even as he moves away from his initial bumbling fool to something else), and Chun Woo-hee is chilling in her few scenes; the kid, Kim Hwan-hee, is also very good (which is crucial to make this work). It’s graphical on its violence, but not excessively so.