The Priests
South Korea 2015
Written by Jae-hyun Jang
Directed by Jae-hyun Jang
Watched on 04.10.2016

I’m very glad that I skipped this one in the cinema and watched the screener instead, since I’m pretty sure that if I had watched this in the theatre, at 2:45 a.m. in the morning, I definitely would have fallen asleep. It’s not that it’s an especially bad movie, but for much of its running time, it’s a rather dull one.

Granted, I’m not the biggest fan of Christian and/or exorcism-themed horror movies, which might definitely play a part in my assessment of it. In “The Priests” they once again commit the cardinal error of claiming that the devil, demons etc. are responsible for all the evil in the world. Sorry, but I do believe that we humans already do a rather good job at it; we don’t need evil spirits for it. And blaming it all on them and thus saying that we humans would be pretty much impeccable without their influence is just vomit-inducing. I might be able to accept the concept of demonic possession within the context of a religious themed horror movie – but don’t ask me to accept that all humans are inherently good, if there weren’t all those evil demons around who fuck with us. I also had to laugh at the DHL-scene. They’re actually delivering on time, and help to save the world? What kind of fantasy is this? Don’t we all know that DHL is the epitome of evil? Seriously, though, the first hour or so is just incredibly dull. Nothing much happens, there’s no tension, and while they at least introduce the main characters, I didn’t get the feeling that it paid off later on. That said, the movie at least has one really good (prolonged) scene, which is the exorcism. That was quite well done. Unfortunately, it was followed by a showdown which felt totally unnecessary. Everything about the pig and the deadline was supposed to be soooo tense and dramatic, but felt boring at best, and unintentionally funny at worst. They simply tried way too hard to make it gripping. In my opinion, it would have been better to skip the pig-stuff and end with the exorcism. And I also would have preferred a different (darker) outcome to this story. Then again, I’ve seen worse, and if you’re into exorcism-themed movies, chances are you’ll like it more than I did. Overall, though, I’d say you don’t miss much if you skip it.
3/10

IMDB