I was planning to see this movie when it was having its limited release more than a week ago, but the timing and location was not perfect and thus I only got the chance to see it yesterday. It was the second of my movie marathon day. My wife was willing to accompany me see this despite being a horror movie (because she is quite a fan of the main lead). Anyway, will go on with the film now.
Brief Story Line
Yong-hu (Park Seo-joon - Midnight Runners, What's Wrong with Secretary Kim TV series etc) was a MMA fighter and champion who had a really bad experience in the past which made him lose faith in God and his religion. However, he somehow experienced an incident that would lead him to question his own faith, especially after he met with an exorcist, Father Ahn (Ahn Sung-ki - Unbowed, Two Cops etc).
Yong-hu would soon be entangled with some fight against evil created by a mysterious guy (Woo Do-hwan - Mad Dog TV series etc). So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this dark horror and drama heavy on spiritualism with some good old fashioned action.
End of Brief Story Line
This was one of those rare movies that I saw in theater without ever seeing the trailer. I think it was never shown in the cinemas (or at least in the cinemas where I saw movies this past few weeks), so I did not have any idea how the film would look like. And the one-liner synopsis did not help either. It only made me even more intrigued, especially since after playing for > 1 week, it was still shown in quite a lot cinemas. Well apparently this movie was quite dark, literally, as there were a lot of scenes taken in the dark. It was a good thing that we saw this in a theater where the screen was bright enough for us to enjoy.
Aside from being literally dark, the story itself was also pretty dark and really heavy. It had a horror tag which was quite spot on because of the exorcism involved (shown numerous times). The movie felt a lot like Hollywood/Western style horror movies where exorcism were used and I gotta say pretty well done, especially with the really convincing appearance by Ahn Sung-ki as Father Ahn with some Latin language conversed fluently (from what I read in the internet he was a Roman Catholic, so it could probably the relevant factor).
In addition to the dark and heavy story, the spiritual aspect was also the main focus in this movie, with Park Seo-joon's character Yong-hu being the center of it all. His portrayal of this guy and his personal struggle was wonderfully done. I also believed that him being in this movie was the real main attraction, which led lots of girls & women to see the movie. I doubt that if the main lead was not a great looking guy like him, this film would have appealed to lots of audience. Btw, I was surprised that the studio we saw this was almost full considering the heavy story. And even more surprising was a kid in the theater as this is a horror movie definitely not suitable for children.
For me this film was quite entertaining. It had some elements of emotional & touching scenes (which definitely affected my wife and some of the audience) and interesting story. The horror was not that horrifying by the fact that my wife did not close her eyes too many times like in other supernatural horror movies. One thing that really made my day was the action sequence which was done seriously and truly satisfied me. The villain here was quite amazingly portrayed by Woo Do-hwan with his evil-ish look/smirk. Ooh, apart from the 3 main cast, there was the cameo appearance of Choi Woo-sik (Train to Busan etc) as young Father Choi. Fun fact: he and Park Seo-joon had appeared together in that South Korean great hit Parasite except Park was the cameo then.
Overall this was an interesting take on a spiritual journey of a man who had lost his faith and entangled in the fight against evil in a way he could never have imagined. It was a quite well combination of horror, drama and some cool action sequence with some Catholic rites shown quite a lot. I enjoyed the movie even though it might have slow pace but the climax was really worth the wait. There was a mid end credit scene which was interesting and provided some surprise to us audience as well. I do not think fans of Park Seo-joon need any encouragement to see this, but if you are neutral audience looking for the above qualities in a movie and you do not mind the long duration of 129 minutes, then you could give this a try. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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