There’s a really fine balance between over explaining magical/mythical/sci-fi parts of a story, and leaving things too undefined for viewers to understand. I think it’s great when films live in that ambiguous in between, letting us imagine out some amount of specifics on our own, but a movie needs to provide the right guidance to let that happen.
I watched The Wailing a couple weeks ago, and I feel like it misses that mark while trying to create a fascinating, intricate, symbolism-laden world. I still loved the movie — it’s a very dark and very funny crime drama that becomes increasingly and fascinatingly mythical as the story goes on, and it caps things off with a climactic shot that I still can’t get out of my head. (For those who’ve...
