Very well put!
-Tom
Regarding The Wailing. I recently watched this video that did a great job of explaining wth is going on. I was originally pretty confused as well.
So I watched what I think was a 2016 Horror movie last night on Prime: Savageland.
It’s a faux-documentary of a tiny little Arizona town where 47 inhabitants were brutally - mostly all the find are parts of bodies and blood everywhere - murdered. The loan survivor - an illegal who does odd jobs around town - is blamed. The Documentary covers the arrest, the trial, and the appeal. As well as the roll of photographs he shot from that night (which represent evidence not present at the original trial, and which were not allowed to be submitted at the appeal).
I went in with zero expectations and I came out first preoccupied by it and having reflected for awhile I like it.
It’s not great, it’s not revolutionary or evolutionary or Devo-lutionary but I think it does what it does well (and I’m starting to wonder if I’m a sucker for this documentary style of horror film, c.f. Atticus Institute, various others). Here they set up a strange mystery, offer up explanations that are mostly within reason for the majority of the oddities regarding the incident (with with just enough “the police explanation of rthis makes no sense” to make it juicy), and leave you (and some of the interviewees) wondering what really happened. There’s no definitive answer, except that you won’t think the poor guy did it (this is not a spoiler; the documentary itself is clearly aimed at establishing that the police got the wrong guy, and it’s up front about this).
It’s not a morality tale or anything, but illegal/immigration and racism are certainly part of the backdrop and they certainly inform the positions of some of the documentary subjects on both sides. It also, to my mind, does a good job of explaining questions like “why didn’t anyone call the police” and "how come this roll of photographs is the only evidence we have from the evening).
There are are couple of exceptionally photos from the surviving roll of film (some of the evidence is more “oh, it’s a blurred photograph” but I think this is what makes the film work, there’s a clear mix of “what am I really seeing” and a few “oh my god what is this turn on the lights”). One of which, for me, was subtly terrifying. One of which was haunting and heartbreaking. Honestly, I think the footage (which is revealed steadily throughout) is the biggest part of what makes the movie (the second is, the actors all come off as regular people being interviewed in a documentary. It helps that they are all nobodies, I guess).