The divine fury2/26/2023 “The Divine Fury” is 129-minutes long and feels it. Kim’s negligible investment in Ahn and Yong-hu’s core beliefs wouldn’t be so frustrating if most of the set pieces in “The Divine Fury” (pretty much any scene involving possessed women and children) didn’t look like one more box to check off of a long shot list. What does hatred for God even mean to Yong-hu, a character who initially talks to Ahn and a Korean shaman with equal skepticism? We’re told, in an early scene, that Christianity means a lot to Yong-hu because it meant a lot to his dad…but so what? More care was seemingly put into the lighting than the scripting of scenes. Yong-hu is told that “You hate very much, but people can't hate without truly loving,” but Yong-hu never meaningfully questions his faith or his anger. But, while Ahn frequently answers his would-be apprentice’s question, his replies are mostly trivial, stuff like “Sure, can drink and smoke” and "A glass of wine after fighting demons makes me sleep like a baby.” I don’t know why I now know this, but I’m guessing you don’t either.Īhn also has an annoying habit of describing Yong-hu’s character in ways that aren’t really confirmed or denied by Yong-hu’s forgettable, plot-pushing actions. Yong-hu sometimes asks about Ahn’s background as a priest, since he lost faith after his father’s death. With that said: Yong-hu and Ahn’s bond is easily the weakest link in “The Divine Fury,” even more so than the slick neon-and-mirrors sensibility that makes the film look like a “ John Wick”-themed perfume commercial. But what Yong-hu sees as a weakness (doubt) is actually a strength in the eyes of Father Ahn, a priest who gives voice to the film’s most regrettable expository dialogue, though at least he doesn’t have to say “I possessed the guy who killed your father,” an actual line that one unfortunate actress, playing a possessed Catholic, gets stuck with. Yong-hu is consequently just another good guy struggling to rid himself of a heavy personal albatross: his dad, Officer Park (Seung-Joon Lee), was killed by the “Dark Bishop,” the same demon that Park chases throughout “The Divine Fury” and that, in the film’s present day, possesses stick figure antagonist Ji-sin (Do-hwan Woo). Writer/director Joo-hwan Kim frequently announces his intention of taking Yong-hu and his crisis of faith seriously, but Kim often fails to provide enough credible details to warrant the excessive concentration that he brings to this mostly generic post-“ The Exorcist” horror movie. Yong-hu’s story is almost never as cuckoo bananas on screen as it is on paper.
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