Fantasia 2025 Review: Don Lee Punches His Way Through Demonic Evils in HOLY NIGHT: DEMON HUNTERS

Hey kids! Do you wanna watch Don Lee (a.k.a Ma Dong-seok) slap the sh#t out of demonic minions? Look no further than Holy Night: Demon Hunters, the feisty debut of South Korean filmmaker Lim Dae-hee. Lee co-writes an action-packed take on paranormal investigators; imagine if Ed and Lorraine Warren hired a third accomplice who punches evil away. It's the exact kind of heavy-handed horror thrills you'd expect from Don Lee's production company Big Punch Pictures, and while the story runs a bit thin given the greater promise of unholy warfare, Holy Night: Demon Hunters is a frightening and furious-fisted possession tale that'll leave a five-fingered bruise on your face.

Lee stars as Bow, the leader of an "extraordinary" trio of exorcists known as Holy Night. He's the hulking muscle. Sharon (Seohyun of K-pop group Girls Generation) exorcises spirits from human vessels, and Kim Gun (David Lee, Squid Game 2) documents their exploits. Their latest case leads them to Eun-seo (Jung Ji-so), a young girl showing signs of possession. With the help of Eun-seo's neuropsychiatrist sister Jung-won (Kyung Soo-jin), Bow reveals an occult plot that's far bigger than Eun-seo—but it'll take more than a few henchmen to stop Lee’s one-person underworld wrecking crew.

The Don Lee of it all is too addictive to ignore. We've seen exorcists with bags of holy water and crucifixes, but Holy Night: Demon Hunters doesn't care for traditions—just brawls. Bow's superpower is born from a traumatic orphanage disaster, where he came face to face with the darkest of entities. Now he's a one-punch man, who turns satanic worshippers dressed like urban ninjas into dust with a single wallop. It's a quintessential Don Lee role, built on brawny strength that sends enemies flying back twenty feet on impact. Bow smacks first and asks questions later, which is a refreshing action-forward mindset compared to your average anti-hellspawn rituals.

That said, there is a jumble about the narrative as Bow's team encounters the demon within Eun-seo. Is it Moloch, a devourer of child sacrifices? Beelzebul, Chief lieutenant of Lucifer? (A handy graphics montage introduces an encyclopedia of possible villains that await in Holy Night: Demon Hunters.) But the film's in-universe lore is so much richer than within Eun-seo's domain (her home). There's a cabal of archbishops and foot soldiers doing Lucifer's bidding, and we never witness the full breadth of dangers opposing Bow because the credits cut off what could be an entire third-act battle (with a few illustrations as a tease). You'll rarely hear me say a film is too short, but at roughly 90 minutes, Holy Night: Demon Hunters feels like it's cheating viewers out of the heights of excitement.

What Holy Night: Demon Hunters does deliver is an amusing action-horror hybrid that's hardly another The Exorcist ripoff. It's more like The Conjuring meets martial arts. As Sharon is tasked with coaxing the malevolence out of Eun-seo, Bow is stationed outside, bashing and smashing his way through waves of ill-suited foes. Dae-hee sprinkles a little comedy into Bow's mundane office conversations, but mainly, the film alternates between line-’em-up beatdown sequences or a respectably frightening possessed performance from Parasite's Jung Ji-so. There's mysticism, mystery, and mallet-slamming punches galore, even if Dae-hee never fully unleashes the film's potential. 

Special effects are predominantly digital, from smokey monsters that emerge from the shadows to the body-bursting fatalities when guards go poof. However, Eun-seo's soul-sucked makeup looks disturbing, and her slinking around when not strapped down comes through with eerie shot setups. Fight scenes are simplistic, leaning on Lee's brute force, yet still find an entertaining style of devil-kissed street fighting that'll have audiences grinning. Dae-hee uses sacred glowing texts as plot devices and relies on familiar satanic rules, but there's a strive here to do something different—even if "different' just means bloody-knuckled throwdowns.

Holy Night: Demon Hunters is dependably good, but could be great. Who's going to complain about Don Lee doing what he does best at the end of the day? What's left on the table in terms of conceptual follow-through doesn't ruin the experience. It's a fun-loving haunter that blends action mindsets with horror atmospheres. While Dae-hee's first picture isn't the scariest midnighter out there, it still has enough of the "horror" in its multi-genre experience to win over scream-seekers. Like that was going to be a problem when Don Lee's out here doing Don Lee things with an otherworldly twist.

Movie Score: 3.5/5