Kids Paying the Price when Adults Fuck up Demon Rituals
Don't do demon stuff if you're not gonna do it right
The Wailing (2016) d: Na Hong-jin
Impetigore (2019) d: Joko Anwar
Noroi: The Curse (2005) d: Kōji Shiraishi
If you’re going to do some sort of demon ritual, you better be sure you’re doing it right. In these movies, children pay the price for ceremony gone wrong.
I’ll get some caveats for The Wailing out of the way right off the bat - it is rough, and it is long, so you have to be ready for it. Now that those are out of the way: watch this movie it’s incrediblllllllllllle. Don’t just take my word, it’s got 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is original, emotional, and - bonus - genuinely scary.
Joko Anwar is the current king of Indonesian cinema. Impetigore can be a tough watch. There’s a lot of violence surrounding infants, which is effectively UNCOMFORTABLE. It was also apparently a tough production. It took 10 years to make, in part because of location difficulties. Anwar eventually found a village that matched his dilapidated vision, and they had to build all the needed infrastructure (e.g. toilets) from scratch. Then on the first day of shooting, Anwar contracted dengue fever and almost died. Thankfully, he didn't, and thankfully, he completed this freaky movie.
Fair warning, there is also some disturbing baby stuff in Noroi: The Curse. For the extremely-online, Noroi was morbidly legendary as it was difficult to find for many years. But lucky for Americans, now it’s on Shudder! It is framed as a found documentary and is a very ominous slow burn with a gritty realistic atmosphere. It’s notorious for a reason - check it out. P.S. The producer has some other mentionable horror creds under his belt, two little films you might know - The Ring and The Grudge.