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There is a certain genre that always stays in the upper ranks in the local box office. Figures point that crime thriller featuring two or three A-list male leads was one of the highest-grossing and most frequently produced genres in the past few years. In 2013, New World, Cold Eyes and The Berlin File occupied the upper strata of the annual box office, scoring 4.68 million, 5.51 million and 7.16 million admissions respectively. In 2014, films like The Target and Tazza-The Hidden Card each attracted more than 3 million admissions in theater.

And in 2015, the upper ranks of the box office were dominated by male-centric crime movies like The Classified File, Inside Men and Veteran. Among these, Inside Men and Veteran marked the peak of such trend, with 9 million and 13 million admissions.

These two films made a new landmark with occult, fantasy and even religious movies' elements, that have rarely been successful in Korean cinema. Critically acclaimed and commercially successful at the same time, The Priests scored 5.44 million admissions while THE WAILING has sold 6.6 million tickets (as of June 11th). Such trend becomes more salient if you add Phantom Detective (2016), a combination of a folk tale and the detective noir genre. Phantom Detective has so far attracted 1.43 million admissions in total.

What triggered this new trend was The Priests released in November last year. The Priests takes its subject matter from Catholicism, evil spirit and exorcism. Illustrating the process of exorcism step by step like a manual, this film runs into the unfamiliar theme and genre. Before this film, there had been hardly any movie in Korea depicting exorcism, let alone the kind of success that The Priests achieved, and that is why the success looked like an exceptional event. 
 
However, THE WAILING, released six months after The Priests, has proved that such success was not just a one time thing. THE WAILING is another occult movie, dealing with exorcism on the basis of Christianity and Korean traditional shamanism. As a serial murder case takes place in a village, the villagers suspect the foreigner (KUNIMURA Jun). Jong-gu (KWAK Do-won), a policeman, also joins the flow of suspicion. The village enters an even bigger chaos when an unknown woman (CHUN Woo-hee) and a shaman (HWANG Jung-min) appear in the village. Blending diverse cultures and views of the world together, which puts the film a step ahead of The Priests as a genre movie, THE WAILING is a very interesting and unique occult movie, both internationally and domestically.

In fact, such generic attempt is not totally new in Korean cinema. Possessed (2009) by LEE Yong-ju, combining fanatic religious devotion with shamanism, received positive reviews from critics. Haunters (2010) by KIM Min-suk, a rare Korean sci-fi hero movie, and A Werewolf Boy by JO Sung-hee, a clever weaving of melodrama and fantasy, were well-received by audiences. The Priests, Phantom Detective and THE WAILING are also in the same vein.

LEE Sang-yong, a film critic, took account of both inside factors and outside factors, in order to explain the performance of these new genre films. As outside factors, LEE points at recent changes in the society. "In the past, films that deal with religion would remain a taboo under the whole social atmosphere. Such taboo is now being removed a little bit," says LEE.

In addition, occult and fantasy are not unfamiliar genres anymore to the viewers, as the internet offers them more access to films and TV dramas from all over the world. For the inside factors, LEE discusses the perfection of narrative. LEE mentioned stories' accuracy, as inside factors. “By perfect storytelling, these films convince you to believe in the supernatural. In other words, these stories make perfect sense." That is to say, that these are very interesting narratives. 

SONG Dae-chan, The Priests' producer, also points at the interesting narrative and change of the public audience as the success factor. “Since the film was actually interesting, it went viral on SNS and all. In addition, audiences today are familiar with diverse genres-there is no such thing as an odd genre for them."

He expects this trend to gain momentum in the future. “Film students today have much more flexible thoughts than ever, since they have been exposed to various media since they were young. They feel comfortable about genres and approach them easily.”