10 Horror Movies That Turned Wimps Into Total Badasses

Jong-goo is established as a cowardly man from the outset of The Wailing. A police officer with little crime to contend with in his small rural village, it's not until a stranger arrives and brings a mysterious illness with him that Jong-goo has to step up - entrusted with figuring out what's going on before the disease spreads and transforms his town into murderers. Those who suffer from it turn frenzied and violent, which is particularly worrisome when Jong-goo's own daughter starts showing the same symptoms.

Initially, Jong-goo is terrified at the slightest suggestion of anything untoward, encapsulated in one scene where a figure appears at the police station and scares him silly, and his continued fear of the innocuous Moo-myeong. But his unease and reluctance to face this supernatural stranglehold on life as he knows it is completely changed by the end of the film.

Desperate to keep his daughter safe and at his wits' end with the terrible fate that has befallen his village, Jong-goo becomes a dog-killing, house-trashing, firm-willed pillar of a man that makes his own decisions and doesn't cower from the weird supernatural beings cropping up and ruining his life. His journey isn't a pleasant one, granted, but it proves the lengths Jong-goo will go to protect his family, and a strength of will that it didn't look like he'd ever find otherwise.