This movie was a big ol mess of demons and vampires, but it was a fun mess because we watched it for our watch party with The Kthree and had an amazing time commenting on all the crazy with a fun group of people. Read further for our full review, tiny spoilers are below!
The Divine Fury (aka 사자, Saja) tells the story of Yong Hoo (Park Seo Joon), an MMA champion who gains a magical stigmata that he uses to fight powerful forces of evil (aka Woo Do Hwan). The only problem is that he kind of hates God after he lost his parents at a young age so the forces of evil try and take him over using his anger as a lure to swing him around to their side.
When his stigmata surfaces after an MMA fight, he seeks the help of Father Ahn (Ahn Sung Ki) who is a priest that performs exorcisms in Korea. Together, they start to fight evil and exorcise ghosts all over Seoul.
The premise is pretty interesting, but this movie is all over the place as it takes a minute for the background story to get sorted and for our hero to join up with the priest and use his stigmata for good. Plus, I can’t even tell you the logical steps as to how they got to the conclusion. On the plus side, the special affects are hilarious and took me out of the spooky moments, which is good because I am a light weight when it comes to horror so I welcomed them.
The best parts of the movie, by far, were when they were in the middle of an exorcism and we got to see all the crazy demons doing their demon things. But the situation is often handled pretty quickly with Yong Ho’s hand, which makes you wonder why they just didn’t lead with his hand every time? Plot holes upon plot holes. But they were fun plot holes to comment on.
The overall movie was kind of draggy at times, but in the eerie horror movie draggy way, and only really started to get going in the last thirty minutes (spoilers ahead) when the vampires showed up and we had increased level of action that led to a big fishlike demon showdown and a fist of fury for our hero. I kind of wish they had the fist of fury for the entire show because it actually was a pretty cool effect. Oh, and more vampires. (end of spoiler)
The final verdict is that I would not recommend spending money on this movie to watch alone, unless you absolutely love Park Seo Joon or Woo Do Hwan, but it is definitely worth watching with a group of people for a fun Halloween night in. If you like all exorcism stories or campy Halloween movies like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Killer Clowns from Outer Space, then go ahead and give this one a go!
RATING: ★★☆☆☆ 2/5 STARS if you watch alone, ★★★★☆ 4/5 with a group
