There are some who will tell you that horror is having a resurgence right now, and they’d be misinformed at best, misunderstood at worst. Horror films have been a steady part of storytelling since before the advent of moving pictures and the amount of film releases available today certainly makes up a significant part of distribution. There are large studio releases like Sinners (2025) blowing up theaters at the time of this writing, while smaller releases like The Devil and the Daylong Brothers (2025) did a simul-release at the start of the year and can now be found on Tubi. No longer relegated to the doldrums of January or October, horror films are landing all year long. Coming from Korea is a brand-new title for North American audiences, Holy Night: Demon Hunters (거룩한 밤: 데몬 헌터스), led by none other than Ma Dong-seok (known as Don Lee in the U.S.) of Eternals (2021) and the Crime City series, which mixes together Ma’s signature physicality and ease with performance genre-switching with standard exorcism tropes for an adventure whose hard hits partially make up for the narrative’s structurally shortcomings.
L-R: Seohyun as Sharon, Ma Dong-seok/Don Lee as Kung Bow, and David Lee as Kim Gun in HOLY NIGHT: DEMON HUNTERS. Photo courtesy of Capelight Pictures.
Something terrible is happening on the streets of Seoul. Random attacks are on the rise and law enforcement cannot seem to stem the tide. At the same time, neuropsychiatrist Jung-won (Gyeong Su-jin) is struggling to find a treatment that works for her rapidly ailing sister, Eun-seo (Jung Ji-so). By recommendation, Jung-won reaches out to Kung Bow (Ma/Lee), the leader of a small team of experienced exorcists with the skills to help. What none realize is that the violence on the streets and Eun-seo are connected, and things are almost at a tipping point where it’s too late to stop a greater danger on the rise.
Holy Night doesn’t just star Ma, it’s also a project that he co-wrote with first-time director Lim Dae-hee based on a story created by Ma. It’s the fifth feature he’s co-written, the others being the last three Crime City films (The Roundup (2022), The Roundup: No Way Out (2023), and The Roundup: Punishment (2024)) as well as 2024’s Badland Hunters. Compared to these others, Holy Night is strangely completely distrusting of its audience while simultaneously trusting them too much. One the one hand, the film has three openings: a cold open to establish the Jung-won/Eun-seo plotline, followed by a title sequence that explicitly lays out religious figures and terminology of the film, before we’re introduced to the trio of Holy Night (though this team name isn’t explicitly stated to establish them when we meet them). Through this structure, audiences are given the tone and internal significance of the film by coming in hot with the supernatural creepiness of the usual tropes (flashing lights, figures moving unnaturally, etc.) and are told that this figure is from which everything else will circle. It’s smart to do this, especially as it implies that the sisters are significant to the larger plot. The title sequence is helpful because it lays out the rules of this world, explicitly telling us the players and their iconography. Finally, the introduction of Holy Night helps to establish a few things, like how the trio gets jobs (through police referrals), how the members function as a team, and their general relationship tone (serious about their work, but not necessarily translating to seriousness amongst themselves or with potential clients). Doing this now grants permission to find ways to do the same later, empowering Holy Night to lean into Ma’s versatility as a performer, as well as that of his co-stars. This structure, however, reduces the dramatic tension of the film as a whole and relies on over-explaining things to get to the next sequence while under-explaining others which would be more effective to explore.
Jung Ji-so as Eun-seo in HOLY NIGHT: DEMON HUNTERS. Photo courtesy of Capelight Pictures.
The opening, for instance, establishes that the Jung-won/Eun-seo storyline is going to be a critical element of the film, but the way in which their storyline is introduced to Holy Night and explored by the team creates a redundancy. Rather than the footage being new for us, too, we’ve either already seen it or had enough exposure to the overall film’s idea of the supernatural that there’s little for us to learn, thereby reducing the efficacy of the thriller element. Likewise, we’re given a great deal of information via the title sequence: hierarchy of fallen angels in Hell, followers on Earth, their markings, etc.. But it’s information that is, again, displayed on screen and explained. For instance, Eun-seo’s Holy Night-executed exorcism is given visible title cards on screen for each stage, but also the characters say it and explain it. It’s another redundancy that does little to enhance the experience. Finally, though the Jung-won/Eun-seo storyline is the main component of Holy Night, rather than the release of Eun-seo being the central part, the narrative uses this exorcism to bring to light elements of Bow’s and teammate Sharon’s (Seohyun) backstory that’s given a bit too much room for inference to make sense. At least, not based on the tiny bit of information we’re given prior to the third act. The problem isn’t that revelations come, it’s that, within the confines of the rules provided in the title sequence and from all the conversations prior, questions are raised without satisfactory answers. Given how a direct correlation isn’t made between the violence on the streets and the Eun-seo storyline, plus the information dropped without clear answers, one gets a sense that Holy Night is more of an unofficial Part One of a larger tale. While it’s totally fine for a film to set up a follow-up, it should, at the very least, be cohesive and clear enough to draw out curiosity to see where it goes.
On the bright side, Holy Night does at least understand what audiences are looking for in a Ma project, and it does bring the pain. Pain which is amplified by a visual flair that makes it appear as though Bow is hitting bad guys so hard that he’s excising them with each major impact — smoke and burning ash flying off as fist makes impact. There are, frankly, too few action sequences to truly satisfy that Big Punch Pictures (Ma’s production company) itch, but the few sequences make such good use of Ma that complaints are few. To compensate, Seohyun picks up the slack as her Sharon is likewise imbued with abilities which enable her to perform the actual exorcisms seen on screen whether within the scene set or on the astral plane. The latter, of which, Lim has designed and executed impressively, making the space both ethereal and disquieting. Additionally, when the plan goes off the rails (as is prone to happen in such stories), the makeup effects and design for Eun-seo deviates from the over-used black eyes and greyed periorbital region denoting possession into something truly fearsome and impressive. Bringing it all together, the performances from the three members of Holy Night — Ma, Seohyn (Love and Leashes), and David Lee (Swing Kids) — convincingly convey a trio that’s been in this world a long time and trusts in the others to do their respective jobs when on-site. This enables the audience to more easily latch on to the crew and actually worry for their safety.
Ma Dong-seok/Don Lee as Kung Bow in HOLY NIGHT: DEMON HUNTERS. Photo courtesy of Capelight Pictures.
As far as Ma projects go, Holy Night: Demon Hunters is a fun film whose supernatural tropes and stop-start narrative structure don’t entirely strip the enjoyment, even if they do make the moments in between the good stuff less entertaining. You get everything you expect from a possession film featuring Ma (action, thrills, and occasional comedy), which is going to be enough to provide a respite from the chaos of the real world. If we’re lucky, Holy Night will continue its story and maybe we’ll get some answers to deepen the mythos and the entertainment.
In North American theaters May 2nd, 2025.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
Share this:
Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
Leave a Reply