Pedro Martín-Calero’s The Wailing (El llanto)was at the top of my hitlist for London Film Festival watches. As usual, I went off of vibes and a couple of photos because I like to go into every movie knowing as little as possible. I even rearranged my travel plans to force this film to fit into my schedule. So, I nearly ran into the theater, with two friends in tow, to see what The Wailing would offer.
The film begins with Andrea, who is seeking her biological mother and is dealt some shocking news. As her search for answers continues, she starts to distrust those around her. When The Wailing leaves our assumed protagonist and present-day Madrid for early 21st-century Buenos Aires, we begin to see a pattern. We also start to see that the supernatural threat connects the past and present and is a metaphor for something psychological.
Cool Vibes, Bro
The Wailing’s opening is a thing of beauty. We are thrown into a club with music pounding and strobe lights disorienting us. We see a woman who is dancing in a crowd of people get attacked by something unseen. As an audience member, you cannot help but lean in. I wondered if this is the nightmare fuel I had been dreaming about the entire festival. When the invisible entity is done with the woman, the film moves to Andrea (Exter Esposito). She is a student in a long-distance relationship who is attempting to find her biological mother. On a call with her boyfriend, Pau (Alex Monner), he spots a figure in the background of her video. This is how we discover that the unseen presence is only visible on screen. It is also how we confirm that Andrea is his new target.
What happens next is not dissimilar to what we have seen in movies like It Follows, Smile, and so forth. I appreciate the feminist leanings, but we have done it a few times so recently that it feels stale. The Wailing has a harder uphill battle than the previous movies because it breaks its story into segments with different protagonists. The film also has difficulty reconciling what the entity is, and what it can do. It can kill people anywhere on the globe while still haunting its prey locally. So, the metaphor of this being inherited mental illness gets stretched pretty thin even if we are making a comment on how our mental health can also impact those close to us.
Let’s Do The Time Warp
The script, penned by Pedro Martín-Calero and Isabel Peña, leaves audiences lots to chew on. Much of the 107-minute runtime is quite interesting, even if it is a bit muddled. The Wailing also has a few disturbing scenes and cool ideas, so it is not a complete waste of time. I am not even mad that they decided to tell the story backward until the end. Although, in the middle of the second chapter, I began to wonder how we would get a resolution if we were moving backward in time.
That worry came to fruition as the friends who survived Andrea’s segment are now called to assist the surviving sister of Marie (Mathilde Ollivier), who was haunted in the second segment. The thing about bringing these stories together is that it happens at the very end of the movie. So, we never see what comes after they all meet up. We do not watch them compare notes. We are not there as they come up with a plan of attack, or even battle the thing that has plagued women for seemingly centuries. This lack of resolution is possibly the biggest letdown in a movie that was so close to being effective. While I cannot say The Wailing is not worth a watch, I cannot say it is not a disappointing watch either.
