Three women are stalked and haunted across generations by a supernatural force in the disappointing and formless horror film The Wailing.
Andrea is a student in Spain. In videos and online meetings with her long-distance boyfriend, they begin to notice a person in the background, not present in person. As she is stalked, she looks into the history of her birth mother, a woman who recently died after being released from prison for a murder just before Andrea’s birth. The mother, Maria, seen as a young woman in 2000, is also a student, but in Argentina, making a strange connection to a film student, Camille. The Wailing follows these three women, and some others, as they are driven to the edge by whoever this figure is. As he comes closer, putting them into danger, they become more unraveled. Sometimes, The Wailing of the title is heard crying through electronics, but it’s a total nothing; existing to provide an ominous title. (As should be obvious by now, there is no relation to the excellent and terrifying 2016 Korean folk horror of the same name.)
Unfortunately, The Wailing is a formless mess. Those concepts are there, there is a discussion to be had within the film, looking at how women are ignored for their danger, how traumas can be inherited via generations, or those being traumatized are often ignored. However, as presented in The Wailing, it’s weightless and meandering. I was left hanging to a frustrating degree. There’s a difference in keeping the audience in the dark for an enticing uncertainty and simply choosing not to give any real answers to anything. But with no drive to the questions barely raised, The Wailing remains in the latter, missing a dramatic punch.
It comes down to poor writing. Isabel Pena and Pedro Martin-Calero’s script fails to confidently set up the characters, creating cyphers that are frustrating to watch. Everyone acts in thick-headed, incomprehensible ways, plodding through each section. There is no drive. We’re dropped into situations and backstories without any flow in a method that makes me say, “Did I fall asleep for a minute? Did I miss something?” I’m left asking “why did that happen?” far too often. The backstory of Maria, the mother, is interestingly told from Camille’s point of view, but it backfires into a confusion of interest and unearned, awkward conflict. The actresses, Ester Exposito as Andrea, Mathilde Ollivier as Marie, and Malena Villa as Camila, are fine, each selling their sketches and almost making their characters’ choices work.
I’ll give that some of the scare sequences do work. Separate from the narrative, they are familiar but well-done. Martin-Caldero is much better in the direction of these sequences than in the writing of the whole. Occasionally, an atmosphere builds, darkness is used to good effect, if not rote, in a “we all know to look in this location for this setup” way. A particular moment at the end of the first act is intimate and frightening. But true to the rest of the film, the results of the scene lead to a “what? How does this connect? Did this happen this way just for the viewers?” 
The best part of The Wailing is the engrossing sound design. With a “wailing” in the title, and featured occasionally in the film, you’d expect a focus in this direction. Each click of the various electronics as the supernatural increases, the build of terror around the women, the shifts in their reality and understanding are all underlain by a dynamic soundscape. It was quite impressive, even when the scare fizzles. If just focusing on the sound, an atmosphere could pervade. Unfortunately, the sound is paired with this story.
The Wailing is a disappointment. The storytelling is underwhelming, tearing down the rest of the film, making what could work in a tighter, more directed manner into a meandering looseness. Some of the horror sequences have a certain power, mostly thanks to the sound design, but are also standard to the set-up and pay-off of the scene. My first disappointment of this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, I can hope it’ll be the last.
The Wailing is presented through the Seattle International Film Festival, running in-person screenings May 15th – 25th and selected online screenings March 26th – June 1st. See Siff.net/festival for more.