Fantasia 2019, Movie Reviews
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[FANTASIA 2019] ‘THE DIVINE FURY’ Review

Yong-Hoo (Seo-joon Park) is an MMA fighter at the top of his game. He discovers he has developed a stigmata on his hand: an open wound in the spot where Christ was crucified, which will not heal. The thing is that while he was raised devoutly Catholic to a single father, Yong-Hoo renounced faith after a priest promised his severely injured father would survive a fatal incident. His father did not survive. Now Yong-Hoo reluctantly seeks the guidance of a different priest Father Ahn (Sung-Ki Ahn), who happens to be a demon-banishing exorcist. It turns out that the wound and the blood from his hand is a weapon against those possessions. They are an odd pairing: a man of God and a man with a gift he doesn’t believe in, The Divine Fury. Together they’ll team up to find and defeat the demonic worshiping  Ji-sin (Do-Hwan Woo) The Dark Bishop and his forces of evil running havoc in Seoul.

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The idea of a “kung-fu exorcist” is pretty great, admittedly, and there are some definite highs along the way. The “buddy cop” elements between Yong-Hoo and Father Ahn worked rather well also, with Seo-joon and Sung-Ki having a strong chemistry that sort of becomes a surrogate father-son situation. The slow pace is the biggest problem I found. At 129 minutes, the movie takes it’s time getting somewhere good, and it tests your patience. Also, tonal shifts; with the melodramatic and moving opening of the film giving way to a slow build with some really effective horror beats and ultimately ending up as something of an action film, the movie is kind of all over the place…though in a controlled, linear way. Director Joo-hwan Kim has a good eye and keeps the action and horror moments kinetic and visually interesting.
There’s something silly about this story, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think it might be the fact that there’s not a sense of fun with the concept, the movie is played pretty straight faced and therefore you may want to giggle. I never got quite that far off the rails with it, though. The last 25 minutes are pretty fantastic and what you’ve been waiting for the entire time. The fighting style isn’t highly choreographed, intricate movements, rather the demons rush and Yong-Hoo is a take down artist, so he takes them down with strong MMA movements — heavy punches, leg sweeps, and throws. It’s really smart in that respect. Also lots of respect for the killer prosthetic work in the finale, which is a seriously cool creature design I’ve never seen accomplished quite like this.
While the movie is very sentimental, I actually did care about the characters enough to feel something from it. Then the action kicks in and I was totally on board. So while as a whole the movie isn’t quite successful, it ultimately won me over. I would LOVE to see a sequel to this that maximizes the potential and really goes balls to the wall. The balls here are near the wall though, and you should definitely check The Divine Fury out.

Good news! In addition to playing Fantasia 2019, The Divine Fury is in limited theatrical release right now, and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on November 19th!

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Spielberg, Hill, Verhoven, Cronenberg, Landis, Carpenter, Lucas, Friedkin, and many others built my taste in youth. Then filmmakers from Italy, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Spain crept in. Now I'm an unstoppable film fiend, and living and breathing ALL the visual mediums you can find. I'll take any excuse to talk movies or TV, so writing and podcasting are my outlets!

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