At The Movies: K-occult thriller Holy Night: Demon Hunters packs a punch, a bittersweet Happyend
Holy Night: Demon Hunters (NC16)
92 minutes, opens on May 8
★★★☆☆
The story: Holy Night is an elite team of exorcists in Seoul and the South Korean capital's only defence against the rise of a devil-worshipping criminal network.
A psychiatrist (Kyung Soo-jin) calls on Holy Night when her sister (Jung Ji-so) begins exhibiting disturbing symptoms no medical diagnosis can explain.
The K-occult thriller Holy Night: Demon Hunters, which began as a 2024 webtoon, introduces Don Lee as the star detective and agency boss Ba-woo: His physical strength is his superpower.
Sharon (Girls' Generation pop idol Seohyun) is the psychic shaman aswirl in boho-chic gowns, while young sidekick Kim Gun (David Lee) provides technical support plus comic relief.
They operate, charmingly, out of a shabby antique mall, and theirs is a recognisable world of downbeat realism however fantastical the exploits as they investigate and then battle to save the possessed girl contorting and levitating in billows of smoke.
The action is intense and atmospheric, until it becomes a repetitive cycle of Ba-woo punching the invading demon and Sharon bellowing 'return to hell'.
They should know, after an hour in, that this approach is not working.
Sharon goes all in nevertheless with her incantations and exorcism kit of knives, mirrors, copper bells and bronze rattles. Writer-director Lim Dae-hee marries Eastern mysticism with Western tropes for the detailed rituals.
The first-time film-maker has also scripted an intimate backstory for Ba-woo, whose tragic boyhood is connected to the cult spreading the dark forces.
The three heroes are each a captivating personality, dynamic in their synergy. The sequel hinted at in the end credits is certainly not unwelcome because they are capable of much more than just this one job.
Hot take: Don Lee of The Roundup film series (2017 to present) may have found himself another hit franchise.
Happyend (PG13)
113 minutes, opens exclusively at The Projector on May 8
★★★☆☆
Hayato Kurihara (left) and Yukito Hidaka in Happyend.
PHOTO: THE PROJECTOR
The story: In near-future Japan, two students at a Tokyo high school prank their humourless principal (Shiro Sano), who installs an invasive surveillance system to identify the culprits. The boys' contrasting responses fissure their lifelong bond.
'Something big is about to change,' warns the prologue. It will not be due to a devastating earthquake, which is a constant threat seized on by the government to expand its emergency powers.
The changes in the J-teen drama Happyend are Kou's (Yukito Hidaka) and Yuta's (Hayato Kurihara) central dynamics, with city-wide civil protests against authoritarianism the backdrop.
Kou is a working-class Zainichi Korean. His people were massacred by the thousands in the wake of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, and the darkening national mood is rekindling the xenophobia: 'hikokumin' (traitor) is graffitied outside his family restaurant one night, rousing him into political activism.
He becomes serious and distant.
Seems like only yesterday he and Yuta were horsing around, and Yuta still is, this coddled aspiring deejay without a care. The tensions expose the fundamental differences between the boyhood best friends.
Their rift is perhaps inevitable. Also in their tight circle of half-dozen sharing a love of underground music are a half-black American (Arazi) and a Chinese girl (Shina Peng), all of them destined to go their separate ways: Japanese writer-director Neo Sora limns the shifts during their final graduation weeks, at that wistful transitional moment between adolescence and adulthood.
Kurihara is the winner of Best Newcomer at the 2025 Asian Film Awards, and Sora's subtle, observational debut feature is deceptively simple in story. It is titled after a composition by his father Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the score, too, honours the late musical mage in synching with the youthful vitality of the cast.
Hot take: Here is a bittersweet coming-of-age experience, unassuming but emotionally textured.
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