Korea · 2019
2h 9m
Director Kim Joo-hwan
Starring Park Seo-jun, Ahn Sung-ki, Woo Do-hwan, Choi Woo-shik
Genre Action, Horror
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A champion MMA fighter seeks the counsel of an exorcist priest after strange marks appear on the palms of his hands. Interpreting the mysterious wounds as a sign of God, the priest enlists the fighter in the battle against evil in this stylish action horror about the demonic and the divine.
Director/writer Kim Joo-hwan (“Midnight Runners”) builds tension deliberately and slowly over the 129-minute running time, delivering some undeniably chilling and visually unsettling images along the way. The Divine Fury doesn’t revolutionize the exorcism movie, but it does manage to shake it up a bit.
Kim’s film is a slick concoction that affords moderate guilty-pleasure fun for a while, though it goes on too long to diminishing effect.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Excitement is hard to find in Joo-hwan Kim's The Divine Fury, a leaden good-vs-evil tale that takes issues of faith very, very seriously but fails to make K.O.-ing the Devil look the least bit fun.
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
The Divine Fury does sound like fun, especially given that, in the film, demons tend to catch fire as they’re exorcised. There’s also a climactic fight scene involving a scaly demon-man. And a ton of dead air, boring asides, tedious backstory, and other unnecessary narrative padding.