divine fury movie review

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the divine fury.

Now streaming on:

How is a movie that’s as conceptually bizarre as “The Divine Fury”—a Korean action/horror hybrid about a possessed mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter— not as thrilling as its wilder ideas? This is a movie where Yong-hu (Seo-joon Park), an agnostic pro-athlete, works on his daddy issues by joining good-natured Father Ahn (Sung-ki Ahn) in speaking Latin and exorcising demons. I agree, hypothetical reader, “The Divine Fury” does sound like fun, especially given that, in the film, demons tend to catch fire as they’re exorcised. There’s also a climactic fight scene involving a scaly demon-man. And a ton of dead air, boring asides, tedious backstory, and other unnecessary narrative padding.

Yong-hu’s story is almost never as cuckoo bananas on screen as it is on paper. 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 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). 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.

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. Yong-hu sometimes asks about Ahn’s background as a priest, since he lost faith after his father’s death. But, while Ahn frequently answers his would-be apprentice’s question, his replies are mostly trivial, stuff like “Sure, [priests] 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.

Ahn 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 is told that “You hate [God] very much, but people can't hate without truly loving,” but Yong-hu never meaningfully questions his faith or his anger. 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.

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. “The Divine Fury” is 129-minutes long and feels it. Some on-screen action is goosed by Ja-wan Koo’s Hans Zimmer-esque score, complete with periodic “ braaahms .” But the sheer spectacle of victims levitating, vomiting blood, and screaming obscenities at feisty Yong-hu and patient Father Ahn just isn’t spectacular enough.

Sometimes, Kim throws in some fun incidental details, like the black chalk that Father Ahn uses to draw the sign of the cross on one demonically possessed victim’s bedroom door. But these familiar symbols don’t add to viewers’ understanding of the characters’ surroundings so much as they remind us of Kim and his collaborators’ creative limits. Yes, I am curious about why Father Ahn carries around an exorcism kit with a charcoal pencil forged from a “sacred olive tree.” Just as I’m interested in finding out what Ahn means when he mysteriously observes that Yong-hu’s father “must have been kind and righteous” since “apples don’t fall far from the tree.” Unfortunately, there isn’t a thought in Ahn’s head that his creators didn’t either dumb down or flat-out misconceive for him.

I hate leaving a higher-than-God-concept like “The Divine Fury” wondering why I don’t better understand its characters, or why Kim chose to dwell so much on his protagonists’ motives when he could have just treated them like sturdy clotheslines to hang a few good scare/action scenes onto. Kim’s movie didn’t provide satisfactory answers to that question, but it did leave me with several new burning ones, like what kind of wine does Father Ahn drink, and how far did his apple drop from his father’s tree? The truth, like religion and several other bad horror movies, is out there.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

Now playing

Wicked Little Letters

Sheila o'malley.

The First Omen

Tomris laffly.

Kaiya Shunyata

The Animal Kingdom

Monica castillo.

Little Wing

Marya e. gates.

Remembering Gene Wilder

Matt zoller seitz, film credits.

The Divine Fury (2019)

129 minutes

Park Seo-joon as Yong-hu

Ahn Sung-ki as Father Ahn

Woo Do-Hwan as Ji-shin

Choi Woo-shik as Priest Choi

Park Ji-hyun as Su-jin

Jung Ji-hoon as Ho-seok

Sim Hee-seop as Priest Kim

• Kim Joo-hwan

Director of Photography

• Cho Sang-yun
• Kim Sun-min

Latest blog posts

He's Got Something Going On: David Proval on Mean Streets, and Acting for Martin Scorsese

Girl Shy and the Birth of the Romantic Comedy

New 2025 Oscar Rules Specify New Composer Eligibility, Inclusion Requirements, No More Drive-In Eligibility

Luca Guadagnino Is Love

Film Review: ‘The Divine Fury’

An MMA fighter and lapsed Catholic reluctantly aids an exorcist in this uneven, overlong Korean horror-action concoction.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

• ‘Hard Miles’ Review: Matthew Modine Stars in a Scenic Cycle Through the West 6 days ago
• ‘Damaged’ Review: Samuel L. Jackson and Vincent Cassel Headline a Slick but Tepid Serial Killer Thriller 2 weeks ago
• ‘Strictly Confidential’ Review: Makeout Scenes and Flimsy Melodrama on a Caribbean Isle 3 weeks ago

Both “The Exorcist” and “Enter the Dragon” came out in 1973, igniting their respective genres at the box-office as never before. So you’d think more than a few enterprising souls would have tried to combine demonic-possession chills and fighting-action thrills. But apart from 1984’s flabbergasting camp classic “Ninja III: The Domination” — with Lucinda Dickey as an aerobics instructor who’s suddenly from hell — it’s hard to think of much in that vein before new arrival “The Divine Fury.”

This Korean import, releasing on about a dozen U.S. screens, features an MMA fighter battling his own demons while helping a priest free the afflicted of supernatural parasites. Jason (aka Joo-hwan) Kim’s film is a slick concoction that affords moderate guilty-pleasure fun for a while, though it goes on too long to diminishing effect. Nonetheless, a sequel is duly promised at the close.

His mother having died in childbirth, little Yong-hoo has only his father (Seung-joon Lee), a man so upstanding and kind you know he won’t survive the first reel. Indeed, he is soon dead after the routine traffic stop of a vehicle that turns out to bear a glowing-eyed, presumably demon-possessed couple. Raised Catholic, our wee hero angrily renounces his faith after prayer has failed to leave him with even one living parent. And he renounces it with a vengeance, actually braining a priest with a thrown cross at dad’s funeral.

Twenty years later, as an adult now played by Park San-jun, Yong-hoo channels that rage as an undefeated pro mixed-martial arts competitor. Spurning God, it seems, has laid him open to worse influences, because upon spying his opponent’s Christ tattoo, he hears a voice saying, “God killed Dad! Get revenge! Revenge!! ” and nearly beats the guy to death. On the plane home, he dreams of being burnt with a crucifix, then awakens with an actual stigmata-like hand wound. Back home in Seoul, a spider-like spirit attacks him in his sleep.

Popular on Variety

These things are worrying, so our hero consults a blind child medium who takes one “look” at him and says “You’re screwed. You’re covered with demons.” That’s a rare moment of humor in a movie that otherwise takes itself verrry seriously, particularly once Yong-hoo reluctantly starts assisting aged, frail, Max von Sydow-like Vatican envoy Father Ahn (Sung-Ki Ahn) in expelling demons from other unfortunates in the city.

Though compelling enough at first (if never very scary), “The Divine Fury” soon settles into a certain narrative monotony as the protagonists simply move from one possession case to another. Among them are a young woman subjected to some very Linda Blair-like torments, then a bullied boy at a Catholic orphanage. Meanwhile, we’re introduced to Ji-sin (Do-Hwan Woo), the impresario of a sleek local discotheque and a kinda-sorta Satanist who maintains eternal youth by sacrificing souls to a “sacred serpent” demon. It is he whom our hero will eventually have to defeat in rather disappointingly ordinary mano-a-mano battle, despite such CG fillips as a literal fist of flame.

At over two hours, all this takes far too long, frittering away the frights and fun in too much somberly nonsensical dialogue and incongruous maudlin moments (underlined by Koo Ja-wan’s score). There is certainly some entertainment value in the usual hash made of Christian beliefs in such an Eastern genre exercise, with arbitrary superpowers granted to such talismanic objects as crucifixes and holy water. You might also wonder why the heck the atheistic hero’s kickbox-y mojo would have any effect on evil spirits unfazed by such officially blessed totems. But this is not the kind of movie where it is useful to ask such questions. Better to pass the time counting salutes to other horror films, among which “The Birds,” “Suspiria” and “The Omen” each receive a passing nod.

Despite its longueurs, “The Divine Fury” is sufficiently atmospheric and polished in the packaging departments, with Lee Bong-Hwan’s production design a notable plus. The leads are reasonably charismatic within one-dimensional roles, so it’s a bit surprising when a closing-credits tag sequence announces, “Father Choi will return in ‘The Green Exorcist’” — passing the torch to a fraidy-cat younger priest (played by Woo-sik Choi) who had only played a minor role here. If there’s going to be a franchise here, it’s going to need more lurid disco lighting and serpent-demon-fu, not more dully earnest spokespersons for cross-culturally watered-down quasi-Catholicism.

Reviewed online, San Francisco, Aug. 5, 2019. Running time: 129 MIN. (Original title: “Saja.”)

• Production: (S. Korea) A Well Go USA Entertainment release (in U.S./Canada) of a Lotte Entertainment presentation of a KeyEast, 706 production. Producers: Park Sung-hye, Shin Pil-soon. Executive producer: Cha Won-chun. Co-producers: Kim Jae-yong, Park A-hyoung.
• Crew: Director, writer: Jason Kim. Camera (color, widescreen, HD): Cho Sang-yun. Editor: Kim Sun-min. Music: Koo Ja-wan.
• With: Park Seo-jun, Ahn Sung-ki, Woo Do-hwan, Seung-joon Lee, Woo-sik Choi, Si-eun Kim, Ji-hoon Jung, Eun-hyung Jo.

More From Our Brands

A private school promised to help troubled kids. instead, some say, it was a nightmare, here are the 50 best bars in north america for 2024, ranked, andy reid lands blockbuster $100m contract with chiefs, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, ratings: ncis, the voice and idol lead monday, all american rebounds, verify it's you, please log in.

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘the divine fury’: film review.

An exorcist gets help from an MMA fighter in Joo-hwan Kim's supernatural saga 'The Divine Fury.'

By John DeFore

John DeFore

• Share this article on Facebook
• Share this article on Twitter
• Share this article on Flipboard
• Share this article on Email
• Show additional share options
• Share this article on Linkedin
• Share this article on Pinit
• Share this article on Reddit
• Share this article on Tumblr
• Share this article on Whatsapp
• Share this article on Print
• Share this article on Comment

As nutty as it may sound, the logline “an MMA champion teams up with an exorcist to fight Satan’s forces” suggests at least a kind of excitement. But excitement is hard to find in Joo-hwan Kim’s The Divine Fury , a leaden good-vs-evil tale that takes issues of faith very, very seriously but fails to make K.O.-ing the Devil look the least bit fun. Asian horror buffs may turn out in small numbers for the Korean import’s Stateside theatrical release, and may appreciate parts of the movie’s vision, but few will argue that it offers either the scares of a classic exorcism drama or the rollicking action of a Hellboy .

Yong-hoo (Seo-joon Park) was still a boy mourning his mother’s death when his father, a traffic cop, was killed in the line of duty. Already on the fence about religion — if God answers prayers, why didn’t he heal Mom? — the boy now picks a side: He throws a crucifix at the priest trying to comfort him, hard, and storms off into a faith-free future.

Related Stories

Disney bets $60b its parks will power the future, 'shogun' is over, but what about season 2 creators justin marks and rachel kondo weigh in.

Release date: Aug 16, 2019

Twenty years later, he’s a famous MMA star living a life of sterile luxury. He’s entering the ring for a bout in America when he sees his opponent’s back: A full-torso tattoo of Jesus on the cross triggers something in him, and a voice in his head repeats, “Get revenge, revenge…God killed Dad, get revenge!” The poor guy in the other corner hardly knows what hit him.

On the long flight back, though, Yong-hoo suffers something more than a bad dream: He awakens with puncture wounds on his palms, and they only get worse over the next few days as the violent nightmares continue. After visits to a doctor and a blind shaman don’t help — “You’re screwed; you’re covered in demons” the shaman says — he seeks advice from men of the cloth.

We meet Father Ahn (Sung-ki Ahn) in one of the film’s many exorcism scenes. An older, very serious man, he’s tight with the Vatican and has mysterious scars from earlier adventures. Ahn’s a potentially appealing character, but he’s given the same tired faith-based dialogue (“There’s a reason behind every torment we suffer”) as everyone else here, and only one scene, in which he shares a couple of beers with the young fighter, attempts to flesh out his personality. Ahn recognizes Yong-hoo’s stigmata for what they are, but won’t initially explain how a man so far from God is experiencing a phenomenon that typically afflicts the very, very faithful.

Across town, a rich nightclub owner (Woo Do-hwan) has clearly made a deal with the Devil. Known as the Dark Bishop, he has an altar in the club’s basement and seeks to please an unseen demonic horde. The movie offers several episodes of remote-control evilmaking, as the Dark Bishop, say, stabs into a disembodied heart like a voodoo doll to cause his mortal enemies pain. He’s the man behind the string of possessions Ahn is being forced to investigate — encounters that are physically dangerous enough that Yong-hoo eventually feels compelled to tag along, lending muscle to the priest’s holy water and prayers.

Director Kim and his star Park had something of a local hit in 2017 with the action comedy Midnight Runners , but any charisma the actor might’ve shown there is hard to see here. Good-looking but generally expressionless, Park finds neither brooding anger nor engaging bewilderment in Yong-hoo as the character grapples with what’s happening to him. Hit-and-miss CGI drives most of the action scenes, and while Ahn’s performance suggests the stakes involved, the film itself has trouble getting viewers to care. Often sluggish and much longer than it needs to be, the picture slogs toward the inevitable moment when, after some hokey visions of his father in the afterlife, Yong-hoo accepts the Lord’s mysterious ways and decides to kick some ass on His behalf.

Production companies: Keyeast, 706 Productions Distributor: Well Go USA Cast: Seo-joon Park, Sung-Ki Ahn, Do-Hwan Woo, Woo-sik Choi Director-screenwriter: Joo-hwan Kim Production designer: Yoo Jung Han Composer: Ja wan Koo

In Korean 129 minutes

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

The o.j. simpson movie that owen wilson (among others) won’t be starring in, john logan to adapt cormac mccarthy’s ‘blood meridian’ for new regency, amy adams to star in ‘at the sea,’ latest drama from kornel mundruczó, awards season calendar: key dates for oscars, emmys, tonys and other major events, hollywood forfeits up to $30b every year because of racial inequity, jane campion to receive locarno film festival honor.

Cinema Escapist

Explore and connect the world through a cinematic lens

South Korea

Review: “the divine fury” blends christianity, horror, and action.

Park Seo-joon uses MMA skills to exorcise demons in his latest collaboration with Jason Kim Joo-hwan.

By Richard Yu , 13 Aug 19 00:01 GMT

South Korea stands out among East Asian countries for being heavily Christian— almost a third of its population identifies as such. Thus, we’re not surprised that, despite a broader East Asian cinematic landscape more known for ghosts and traditional folk religion , Korean horror flick The Divine Fury takes on a heavy Christian theme. 

The film begins with Yong-hoo (Park Seo-joon) and his policeman father discussing their Christian faith. Yong-hoo’s mother died in childbirth, which makes him question his father’s strong belief in the power of prayer. This doubt only intensifies when a drunk motorist kills Yong-hoo’s father. Some years later, the adult Yong-hoo is now a famous (atheist) mixed martial arts fighter. After one fight, Yong-hoo starts bleeding from his palms—a phenomenon that doctors struggle to explain. He finally decides to visit a priest named An, who notices the resemblance with Jesus’ crucifixion. An tells Yong-hoo that his wound is in fact a Stigmata , with the ability to exorcise demons by lighting their faces on fire.

Buddy Cops Versus Demons

As it happens, priest An (Ahn Sung-ki) works as a full-time exorcist, using a holy cross and the power of Latin chants to remove demons from the human bodies that they take over. Although Yong-hoo is initially reluctant, he starts to help An out with the exorcisms, and Divine Fury almost takes on a buddy cop vibe. The duo spend considerable screen time discussing theology and the role of religion, but An also becomes a father figure for Yong-hoo as they battle possessed souls. 

While Priest An prefers to use the words of God to fight demons, Yong-hoo has a much more kinetic approach to exorcism—beat the crap out of the demon and light their face on fire with his Stigmata (he’s an MMA fighter, after all). Divine Fury is as much a horror movie as it is an action movie packed with more than enough pure ass-kicking on the part of Yong-hoo.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

However, we’re not convinced that Divine Fury straddles the two genres well. For one, people love horror movies because of how they create a sense of drama and suspense—something that this film eschews in favor of fight scenes. At the same time, action fans might find the screeching demons, bloodshot eyes, and occult themes off-putting if they were just looking for some pure ass-kicking. In trying to execute both horror and action, Divine Fury succeeds at neither.

A bigger weakness is the lack of character development over the course of Divine Fury . Yong-hoo’s struggle with his faith is resolved quite easily—after all, it’s pretty hard to deny the existence of heaven and hell when you’re literally trying to light demons’ faces on fire. Priest An’s character is even more flat, hardly changing over the two-plus hours of screentime. 

With all these flaws, it’s no wonder that Yoona’s movie Exit beat it in theatres on opening day . Still, the movie does have one redeeming quality—at least Park Seo-joon fans can see him without a shirt on .

The Divine Fury is in theatres across Korea. It will be released in the US and Canada on August 16th, and across various Asian countries throughout the month of August. 

The Divine Fury (Korean: 사자) — South Korea. Dialog in Korean. Directed by Jason Kim Joo-hwan. First released Running time 2hr 9min. Starring Park Seo-joon, Woo Do-hwan, and Ahn Sung-ki. 

Want more? Join our 30K+ followers on Facebook and Twitter .

You May Also Like

The 11 best korean action movies, by anthony kao, review: "the great battle" is an action-packed dramatization of a famous korean battle, by richard yu, review: “take point” is an action-packed critique of political selfishness, review: "the negotiation" is a psychological roller coaster highlighting korean corruption, by fred han, review: "furie" is an fast-paced vietnamese action thriller.

The Divine Fury (2019)

• User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews
• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

• Advertising

• Prime Video
• Best & Worst

Select Page

The Divine Fury (3/5) – Fantasia 2019 Review

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Aug 2, 2019 | 3 minutes

THE DIVINE FURY is a new action-horror sci-fi movie from South Korea that just screened at Fantasia 2019. It’s full of demons and has some very impressive fight scenes. Read more about this genre hybrid in our The Divine Fury review here.

The Divine Fury is a new movie from South Korea. It’s a real genre hybrid with elements of action, horror, thriller,  and sci-fi while still focusing on its characters. In the usual awesome way, South Korean movies tend to.

The movie is visually gorgeous and has some great effects (especially in terms of shadows). It does however run too long and has a rather weak ending compared to the beginning.

Find out why it’s still definitely worth watching in our full The Divine Fury review below.

Such a strong cast

For many people, the draw of  The Divine Fury could easily be the cast that has several actors you should know from other South Korean movies.

We have Sung-Ki Ahn portraying the priest, Father Ahn, and he really is the heart and soul of the movie. Whatever your feelings about demons and exorcism might be, he makes it all seem somehow very believable. You might actually recognize Sung-Ki Ahn from the Hollywood action movie  Last Knights starring Morgan Freeman and Clive Owen.

Finally, we have Woo-sik Choi in a smaller role as the younger priest Father Choi. You should recognize Woo-sik Choi from movies like  Train to Busan or the Netflix movie  Okja .

You should also like: Our review of  Okja which can be watched on Netflix >

Also, he’s in Parasite which is the latest award-winning movie by the brilliant director Joon-ho Bong.

You might not know the two actors in key roles unless you watch TV series from South Korea, but they are damn good. Do-Hwan Woo plays the bad guy and does it so damn well that you nearly root for him. Especially working across from Seo-Joon Park who portrays the main protagonist Yong-hoo.

An impressive feat by Kim Joo-hwan

The Divine Fury was both written and directed by Kim Joo-hwan. This is only his third directing credit and his second writing credit. But with a result like this, it will be far from his last.

The theme is one that we’re very familiar with from various US movies. Good versus evil in the classic sense of the Christian faith. I’m not always the biggest fan of those stories. Or to be more specific, I do love movies like The Exorcist but I  do not care for any story that tells me “Believe in God or you will pay the price”.

Fortunately,  The Divine Fury has a brilliant ability to focus on faith as a more open concept. One where God is good and you should believe in love and your fellow man. And, most importantly, yourself. This made the very core concept of this movie work like a charm for me.

The Divine Fury screened at Fantasia 2019 where it had the honor of being the closing film. It will be out in US theaters on August 16, 2019.

Director: Kim Joo-hwan Cast: Seo-Joon Park, Sung-Ki Ahn, Do-Hwan Woo

After losing his father at a young age in a terrible accident, Yong-hu abandons his Christian faith and chooses to only believe in himself. Now as an adult, Yong-hu is a champion fighter and has everything he has ever wanted, that is until mysterious wounds appear in the palms of his hands. He solicits help from a local priest, Father Ahn. Hoping the priest can help relieve him of the painful markings, he instead finds himself in the middle of a dangerous fight against otherworldly evil forces.

• Recent Posts

• Deliver Me – Netflix Series Review - April 24, 2024
• Infested – Shudder Review (3/5) - April 22, 2024
• The Jinx: Part Two – HBO/Max Review - April 20, 2024

About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

Related Posts

Rent-A-Pal – Movie Review (4/5)

September 11, 2020

Martyrs Lane – Fantasia Review (4/5)

August 19, 2021

Our Father – Netflix Documentary Review (4/5)

May 10, 2022

The Vanished – Netflix Review (2/5)

January 15, 2021

Pin It on Pinterest

• Movie Reviews
• Blu-ray/DVD

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

'the divine fury' (2019) movie review.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Letterboxd — Your life in film

Forgotten username or password ?

• Start a new list…
• Add all films to a list…
• Add all films to watchlist

Add to your films…

Press Tab to complete, Enter to create

A moderator has locked this field.

Add to lists

Where to watch

The divine fury.

2019 ‘사자’ Directed by Kim Joo-hwan

Will you stand with good or evil?

After waking up with mysterious wounds on his hands, a champion fighter finds himself in an otherworldly battle against evil forces that wreak havoc in the human world.

Park Seo-jun Ahn Sung-ki Woo Do-hwan Choi Woo-shik Park Ji-hyun Jung Ji-hoon Lee Seung-hee Sim Hee-seop Kim See-eun Kim Seon-min Jeong Eui-soon Kim Beom-soo Park Jae-hong Cha Si-won Lee Seung-joon Ryu Kyung-soo Seo Jeong-yeon Jo Eun-hyung Lee Jung-hyun Park Ji-yeol Shin Min-ho Mi Seok Lee Sul Park Jin-joo Han Hye-ji Jeong Da-eun Seung Hyung-bae Shin An-jin Yoon Jae-in Show All… Lee Chan-yu

Director Director

Kim Joo-hwan

Producers Producers

Park A-hyoung Park Sung-hye Shin Pil-soon Im Jun-hyuk

Writer Writer

Editor editor.

Kim Sun-min

Cinematography Cinematography

Cho Sang-yun

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Cha Won-chun Jeong Gyeong-jae

Lighting Lighting

Park Jun-gyu

Production Design Production Design

Lee Bong-hwan

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Ha Jae-gu Jay Seung Jaegal Seo Byeong-chul

Stunts Stunts

Jeong Seong-ho Park Young-sik Kim Yong-ho Choi Kwang-rak Lim Wang-sub

Composer Composer

Sound sound.

Park Yong-gi Jang Cheol-ho Lee Soon-sung

Costume Design Costume Design

Chae Kyung-hwa

Makeup Makeup

Son Eun-ju Seol Ha-un

Lotte Entertainment Content K KEYEAST

Releases by Date

• Theatrical limited

16 Aug 2019

31 jul 2019, 15 aug 2019, 22 aug 2019, 19 nov 2019, 31 jan 2020, releases by country.

• Physical 18
• Theatrical IIB
• Theatrical NC16 (with cuts)
• Theatrical 15
• Physical NR

129 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Sierra ★★½ 2

dohwan unhinge ur jaw and swallow me like the demon lizard daddy u are hail satan

Review by maider ★★

this movie is part of the hpcm (hot priest cinematic universe)

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★

Spooktober III: The Haunting of the Blood October

This film was pretty much a letdown. I mean, you practically have a Korean Constantine who also happens to be an MMA fighter who literally fights his a** off. The fight editing and choreography are particularly strong points. The primary demon has a cool, albeit not wholly original design. Furthermore, the film's cinematography is excellent, as is customary for Korean movies. The acting is fine considering the kind of movie it is.

But overall, it's a film I just couldn't get into. It contains a lot of interesting concepts, but the execution left me feeling very unimpressed. Though effective, the effects occasionally came off as comical.

All in all, though I found the film's concept and parts of it enjoyable, I couldn't shake the feeling that it fell short of its potential.

TODAY SCHEDULE Baby Blood Cat Sick Blues Terrifier 2 The Divine Fury

Review by donnia ★★★★

A hot MMA fighter taking on the devil's army with his literal fists...................... The Exorcist can't relate

Review by HKFanatic ★★★

If you watched William Friedkin's 1973 horror classic "The Exorcist" and thought, 'Gee, that was great, but you know what it could have used? Mixed Martial Arts,' then director Kim Joo-hwan has you covered with this year's "The Divine Fury." The film looks slick and stylish, with neon nightclubs lit like the ninth circle of hell, but it's surprisingly ponderous and self-serious for most of its 130 minute runtime, at least until the action finale impresses with flaming punches and a single take fight scene.

Review by shi qin ★★★

3 stars for the hot holy trinity park seojoon, woo dohwan & choi wooshik 🥰

korean cinema 🇰🇷

Review by Aléks ★★★★

Park Seo-joon and Woo Do-hwan big tiddie fight to the death! This is the new Constantine! Genius!

Review by Chris Brown ★★★★ 6

"I Kick Ass for the Lord!" The Movie.

This flick surprised me by being a hell of a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Who could've watched The Exorcist and thought, "You know, I think this needs more fight scenes!"

This kind of reminds me of the more exloitationy American "Christian" films like Revelations, but with horror, marital arts and a superhero origin story. And it's all the better for it.

Review by yuw ★★★

woo doo hwan you kinky angry demon lizard bitch

Review by Geoffrey Broomer ★★★ 4

MMA Exorcist.

That title would give Santa Jaws a run for its money, but The Divine Fury had to go the classy route. A celebrated mixed martial artist (Park Seo-joon) with atheist tendencies seeks out a priest (Ahn Sung-ki) to deal with a nasty case of stigmata, only to discover the clergyman on the ropes against the forces of darkness. With bad dreams that suggest he might be facing similar demonic forces, our bruiser puts aside his godless ways to become a holy warrior - guillotine choking the devils out. The Divine Fury brings a variation to the exorcist template that was sorely missing from the 12th Assistant Deaconverse - though does so in a more ludicrous manner that borders…

Review by Matt Malpica Reifschneider ★★★★

Had The Divine Fury been made in any other country besides South Korea and been made in any other time, the film would have been a hokey genre affair with a tagline like “First he brought the fight to the octagon, now he brings the fight to Satan!” To be fair, that is essentially what this film is in a nutshell. At the basics, it’s about a star MMA fighter who finds himself side by side with a Vatican priest fighting off a horde of demons possessing a bunch of people in Seoul. The brilliant maneuver that The Divine Fury brings to the floor is that it takes itself shockingly seriously and it’s impeccably executed. It’s stylish as hell (pun…

Review by André Hecker ★★★ 1

MMA-Priester kloppt Dämonen mit Flammenfäusten kaputt. Gibts nicht? Gibts doch! The Divine Fury mixt Exorzismus mit Fighting zu einem experimentellen Mash-up aus Südkorea zusammen. Anders als zunächst erwartet, nimmt der Exorzismus allerdings deutlich mehr Raum ein und anstatt Over-the-top-Action gibt es reichlich düstere Bilder und unheilvolle Bilder. Die Eigenschaften des MMA-Kämpfers spielen im Film lange keine Rolle, ehe es erst am Ende ordentlich was auf die Dämonenfratze gibt. Ein abwechslungsreicherer Mix hätte mir mehr Spaß gemacht, so behält sich der Film allerdings seine Ernsthaftigkeit länger als vermutet, bevor das Finale dann sehr an Videospiele erinnert.

Trotz 130 Minuten Laufzeit weiß Divine Fury diese auch zu füllen und langweilt nicht, wenn die Story auch reichlich quatschig daher kommt. Insgesamt ist das…

Select your preferred poster

Upgrade to remove ads.

Letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we rely mostly on the support of our members to maintain our site and apps. Please consider upgrading to a Pro account —for less than a couple bucks a month, you’ll get cool additional features like all-time and annual stats pages ( example ), the ability to select (and filter by) your favorite streaming services, and no ads!

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Challengers Link to Challengers
• Abigail Link to Abigail
• Arcadian Link to Arcadian

New TV Tonight

• The Jinx: Season 2
• Knuckles: Season 1
• The Big Door Prize: Season 2
• THEM: The Scare: Season 2
• Velma: Season 2
• Secrets of the Octopus: Season 1
• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Season 1
• We're Here: Season 4

Most Popular TV on RT

• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• The Sympathizer: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Under the Bridge: Season 1
• Sugar: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Under the Bridge Link to Under the Bridge
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

DC Animated Movies In Order: How to Watch 54 Original and Universe Films

The Best TV Seasons Certified Fresh at 100%

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Watch An Exclusive Pixar Studio Tour, Plus Inside Out 2 Secrets From The Set

Weekend Box Office Results: Civil War Earns Second Victory in a Row

• Trending on RT
• Challengers
• Play Movie Trivia

The Divine Fury

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Kim Joo-hwan

Park Seo-jun

Best Movies to Stream at Home

The Divine Fury

About this movie

Ratings and reviews.

• Flag inappropriate

• Show review history

Rate this movie