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The mighty fists of Ma Dong-seok punch the Devil right back to hell in Lim Dae-hee’s supernatural action drama, Holy Night: Demon Hunters (거룩한 밤: 데몬 헌터스, Geolughan Bam: Demon Hunters). The latest in the long line of vehicles for the much loved star, the film is as much about its hero’s own demons as the more literal kind as he finds himself confronted by the past and his unresolved trauma while trying to save a young woman who seems to have been possessed by a powerful and malevolent supernatural entity.
Bow (Ma Dong-seok) runs a detective agency that specialises in supernatural crime and is often called in when the police run out of other options. He and his two assistants, Sharon (Seohyun), the exorcist, and Kim Gun (Lee David), the cameraman, are charged with a missing persons case that has links to a series of ongoing violent crimes apparently committed by “Worshippers,” or those who have chosen the dark side and are in league with the demons to “cause harm to people and spread evil”. Meanwhile, the team is also approached by a doctor, Jung-won (Kyung Soo-jin), who is at her wit’s end trying to treat her younger sister Eun-seo (Jung Ji-so). Eun-seo is currently being treated for schizophrenia but, Jung-won now suspects after taking advice from fellow doctor and Catholic priest Father Marco, she may actually be possessed.
The film’s worldview is indeed steeped in religion and though it doesn’t really get into it, there’s something a little discomforting in its positioning of Jung-won as a woman of science eventually forced to accept that her sister’s illness is demonic. Not only is the implication that those living with schizophrenia are inherently dangerous and, in fact “evil”, but also that they pose an ongoing threat as Bow fights off a corridor full of otherwise zombified patients who’ve been released from their cell-like rooms by the demonically empowered Eun-seo.
Meanwhile, in contrast to other similarly themed Korean supernatural thrillers, the Catholic Church is presented uncritically as a source of infinite good and the only means of fighting the darkness the demons represent. The only note of uncertainty lies in Bow’s feud with Father Marco because he unwittingly appeased the demons after realising that Bow’s childhood friend Joseph, with whom he grew up in the same orphanage, is actually the incarnation of Lucifer. He chose not to say anything because he didn’t want to believe that Joseph could be “evil”. In any case, Bow’s trauma flows from the same source. He blames himself for being unable to stop Joseph when he attacked the orphanage, killing several children along with their shared maternal figure Sister Angela. Working with another nun, Sister Catalina, Bow is saving to open a new Catholic orphanage as a means of atonement while otherwise vanquishing other demons with his God-given gift, his fists.
It’s only in confronting his trauma that Bow is able to unlock his full power, which actually comes from the Devil, though he, like Sharon, has elected to use it for “good” rather than evil. Thus they are both in some sense fighting their darker impulses in rejecting the “evil” view of the world presented by the Worshippers who, the film suggests, very much walk among us in the guise of “good neighbours.” The film sets this cosmology up as a kind of comic book-esque universe and even slips into webtoon-style animation in the closing scenes as Bow takes on yet more ungodly forces and smacks them straight back to hell.
That said, there’s less of Ma Dong-seok punching bad guys than might be expected from this type of film, though there’s certainly room for his brand of deadpan, wisecracking humour that gives the team a lived-in feel even if they otherwise seem slightly underwritten as if this were the big-screen adaptation of a television series the viewer hasn’t seen. It also has less in common with previous exorcism dramas such as The Priests, The Divine Fury, or Devil’s Stay and seems to be influenced more by Hollywood films about demonic possession while otherwise taking visual inspiration from the Paranormal Activity series and ghost shows along with the odd J-horror jump scare. It also borrows J-horror’s technological anxiety in Eun-seo’s ability to make the digital signal twitch, though the film never particularly does very much with it. Nevertheless, it’s all carried along by Ma’s winning charm as an action star along with the committed performances of the cast even when not particularly well served by the material.
Holy Night: Demon Hunters is in US cinemas now courtesy of Capelight Pictures.
International trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 