The Movie: The Divine Fury (사자)
The Director: Kim Joo-hwan
The Cast: Park Seo-jun, Ahn Sung-ki, Woo Do-hwan, Choi Woo-sik
The Story: The film tells the story of a martial arts champion who gains divine powers to fight with a powerful evil force.
The Review:
Holy demons, this movie seriously just blew my mind! The whole thing is an action, horror, martial arts, science fiction, exorcism, thriller that is a crazy combination of Blade, Underworld, John Wick, and even a tiny bit of The Last Dragon. Yes, that will all make sense once you see the movie. Now I will caution you in saying that this is not a big blockbuster, epic scale extravaganza, but it does take elements of the movies I mentioned and plugs them all into a classic Korean thriller.
At its core, this is a horror movie with all the scares and thrills that come with the genre like bone chilling exorcisms, demons regurgitating blood, and dark hallways filled with who knows what around every corner. Kim Joo-hwan also adds a lot of history and legend to the story which helps to build a fully realized world that I am hoping we get to see more of in future installments which are hinted at as the movie comes to a close.
The combination of horror and martial arts works really well together in very much the same way it works in Blade and Underworld as mentioned above. The action actually elevates the horror elements to give everything a bit of an otherworldly quality while the standard redemption and origin story elements keep things from getting too crazy. If this is what South Korean genre film making looks like moving forward then I will be here for all of it.
The Divine Fury is an official selection of the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival.
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