Some great things in The Wailing but it's ultimately crushed by its heavy ambitions

If you can imagine is mash-up of Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist set in contemporary, rural Korea, you've got the essence of The Wailing, a really weird horror film that plays on our deepest cultural fears and anxieties: particularly possession of children - the horror that a child can be transformed into a demonic creature beyond morality, completely evil and deranged. Add to this a remote community where people attacked by zombies become infected and turn into ghouls that gorge on flood (and on fish, it seems), and add to that a few other themes: the irrational phobia against outsiders and foreigners (build a wall!) the torment of sin and expiation - a lot going on in this movie. It differs from many other horror films in that it's structured as a police procedural: a local police officer is called out on a rainy morning (torrential rain is a feature and a torment throughout the film) to investigate a murder, which turns out to be the first in a sequence of ghastly, unexplained death - gradually we see that each is carried out by a crazed zombie bloodthirsty screaming demonic person - but who or what is infecting these people? The police officer has a good relationship w/ his young daughter, but in a strange sequence the daughter spies him having sex in the back seat of his patrol car with the family maid. He later takes the daughter for a walk in a park, and she blithely indicates she's caught him in the act before - but she says "Don't worry, I won't tell." On a psychological level, it's this repression - his, and hers - that leads to her infection and possession: She doesn't "tell" but she becomes a monster, screaming obscenities at her father and others. The cinematography in this film is extraordinary - with a great range of palette, from beautiful mountain landscapes to the run-down remote town with its grim main street and modern but threadbare hospital and police precinct to some haunting scenes of possession and attempted exorcism. All told, though - I wish I could like this movie more. It held my attention, and had a lot of working themes, but in the end I couldn't help but think: what was that all about? Sure, you need to have a willing suspension of disbelief to engage in any horror film, but this one seems weighted down by its own ambition: to many themes, too many ideas, and an ending so convoluted as to defy any normal attempt at comprehension.