The Wailing (15)

Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment, £7.99

A BOX office hit in South Korea and accorded prestigious slots at both the Cannes and London film festivals, this third feature from Seoul-born director Na Hong-jin is epic in both length - it clocks in at two and a half hours plus - and scope: imagine The Exorcist crossed with The Omen crossed with every J-Horror film you've ever seen. Except The Ring. Even this isn't that scary.

Set in a mountain town in South Korea, the film follows hapless local cop Jeon Jong-gu (Kwak Do-won) as he investigates an increasingly bizarre series of deaths in which one person always seems to have run amok, killing their family members. Soon, rumours are flying about a Japanese man (Jun Kunimura) living in the backwoods somewhere: in this community, superstition runs deep and some believe he's a demon or a malevolent ghost. Sightings of him wandering naked through the wood and feasting off the flesh of dead animals don't help.

For the first 90 minutes, Na Hong-jin carefully strings us along through a series of weird, Lynchian encounters with some of the town's kookier residents. But gradually the supernatural elements come to the fore as Jeon Jong-gu's daughter Hyo-jin (Kim Hwan-hee) appears to become possessed and his mother calls in a shaman to perform an exorcism. Meanwhile a ghostly young woman in white (Chun Woo-hee) flits between the Japanese man - who may well be an innocent eccentric, albeit one with a thing for spooky, candle-lit shrines featuring photographs of the bloodied victims - and the investigating police officers. As tension racks up, Jeon Jong-gu is faced with these three sources of supernatural power - four, if you count the ineffectual Catholic priest who gets dragged in at one point - but has no idea which, if any, is on his side. Or is everyone conspiring against him and his family? In this mash-up of possibilities it's hard to pick out a logical narrative, but there's no mistaking the bleakness of the blood-soaked ending. A nimble piece of film-making from a new name in world cinema.

The Childhood Of A Leader (12)

Soda Pictures, £17.99

FANS of difficult and uncompromising film soundtracks have a double treat this month. Last week saw the release of Pablo Lorrain's Jacqueline Kennedy biopic, Jackie, with its much talked about score by young British musician Mica Levi. Now Soda release this debut feature from actor-turned-director Brady Corbet, which also features an extraordinarily dissonant soundtrack, this one by 1960s legend Scott Walker. It's his first soundtrack proper since he did the honours for Leos Carax on the Frenchman's 1999 film, Pola X.

The film itself is as powerful and beguiling as Walker's music. Based (loosely) on Jean-Paul Sartre's 1939 short story of the same name, it stars Liam Cunningham as an American diplomat stationed in France after the end of the first world war and tasked with negotiating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Berenice Bejo (star of The Artist) plays his French wife but it's their young son Prescott (Tom Sweet) who's at the heart of the story: troubled and odd, he spends much of the film either locked in his room or running around the family home, a vast, shabby house on the outskirts of Paris. Often ignored by the adults, who have other things on their minds, he watches and observes.

Robert Pattinson plays journalist Charles Marker, a family friend and (we suspect) a former lover of Prescott's mother. But he has another role too, revealed as the film (and the score) deliver a final sting and the meaning of the title at last becomes clear. Sartre's underlying theme, about the rise of fascism and the dark allure of the demagogue, has never been more relevant.

Delicious (15)

RLJ Entertainment, £19.99

THIS dark(-ish), funny(-ish) four-parter aired on Sky One last year and stars Emilia Fox and Dawn French as Sam Vincent and Gina Benelli, respectively wife and ex-wife of hot-shot chef Leo Vincent (Iain Glen). Gina helped Leo build his Italian-themed business and still provides ingredients to his Cornish country hotel, which Sam now helps run. Gina is also mother to Leo's daughter, Teresa (allergic to water, borderline anorexic, always wears black). Meanwhile Sam and Leo have a grown-up child of their own: Michael (likes to chop wood stripped to the waist, a la Ross Poldark).

Tanya Reynolds and Ruairi O'Connor play the kids, while an under-used Sheila Hancock plays Leo's acid-tongued mother Mimi, formerly a code-breaker at Bletchley Park (“The Nazis never stood a chance”, says Leo, whose explanatory voice-overs punctuate the action).

As the show opens, Sam is plagued by the suspicion that Leo is having an affair. She's not surprised when she finds out he is, but she's flabbergasted when she finds out who with - Leo is now back in Gina's bed. Further complications ensue when Leo drops dead of a suspected heart attack mid-way through the first episode. His narration of events doesn't stop there, though, as writer-creator Dan Sefton, who cut his teeth on middlebrow prime-time shows like Mr Selfridge and Holby City, uses him to commentate wryly on much of what follows. That said, great casting and the odd good line can't cover up the show's short-comings: it never quite makes up its mind whether it's a black comedy or a family soap.