“Devils Stay” Theatrical Poster
Director: Hyeon Moon-seob
Cast: Park Shin-Yang, Lee Min-Ki, Lee Re, Won Mi-won, Yoon Jong Seok, Yoo Sun-ho, Shim So-young
Running Time: 95 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Ever since 2015’s The Priests Korean cinema has had bit of a thing going on with, well, priests. While Jang Jae-hyon’s debut served up its holy protagonists in the context of the exorcism genre, since then we’ve had MMA priests fighting demons in The Divine Fury, occult detective priests in Svaha: The Sixth Finger, and more exorcisms in Metamorphosis. Delve into the K-drama world and it would be remiss not to mention The Fiery Priest, The Guest, and don’t forget just plain old Priest. Needless to say if Asians in dog collars are your thing, then Korea has you covered. Almost 10 years later, and in 2024 its once more exorcism that’s on the cards for Lee Min-ki’s (For the Emperor, Monster) priest in Devils Stay.
The big screen debut of director Hyeon Moon-seob after helming the 2016 web-drama Nightmare Teacher, Devils Stay is another production in Korea’s seemingly inexhaustible backlog of movies that got pushed back from release during the COVID-19 pandemic. Filmed in 2020 (which aligns it much closer with the previously mentioned titles), it eventually got taken off the shelf in 2024, its mid-budget status likely seeing it pushed to the back of the queue behind the bigger budgeted productions that suffered a similar fate. Opening very much like any number of other exorcism movies, we’re introduced to Min-ki attempting to free a young girl of the demon that’s possessed her. I’ve made this point before, but has there ever been an exorcism movie where the main character that’s possessed isn’t a girl!?
It’s such a familiar trope at this point that Moon-seob seemingly didn’t give a 2nd thought to having the scene play out as part of a pre-credits sequence, which is perhaps a sign of awareness that audiences are overly familiar with a screaming girl strapped to a bed at this point. Played by Lee Re (Peninsula, Seven Years of Night), on the scale of demonic possession portrayals in cinema she’s on the lower end, strictly limited to wide eyed yelling and pretending to be fine in an attempt to make her father break into the room and interrupt the exorcism. No 360 head turns or projectile vomit here.
Also in the tradition of opening scene exorcisms, things expectedly take an unexpected turn, and despite seemingly being freed from the demon’s clutches, Re suddenly passes away. It’s here that Devils Stay thankfully decides to differentiate itself from the myriad of other exorcism movies out there, so rather than skip a few months into the future or some other plot switch, the narrative settles its focus on her heart surgeon father in the immediate aftermath of her death. Played by Park Shin-yang (The Big Swindle, The Uninvited), here marking his first time to return to the big screen since 2012’s The Man on the Edge, we learn that Re was suffering from a heart problem and needed a transplant.
Interspersed flashback scenes allow the audience to gain an insight into her and her fathers close relationship, with the contrast between the past and present effectively presented to convey the sense of loss Shin-yang is going through, and gradually reveal how the possession came about. Devils Stay takes a leaf out of Seire’s book in its use of Korea’s 3-day funeral ritual to frame its plot, and after the familiar opening the change in tone to one of more creeping dread is a welcome one. Most of the plot plays out in the funeral home that the family stay at during the ritual, with Re’s body kept in the morgue in the basement, and Moon-seob creates a claustrophobic atmosphere using the limited location.
Considering the title Devils Stay, it’s not a spoiler to say that the demon in question may not have left Re’s body, even in death, which soon starts to cause a number of unexplained goings on. One of the biggest issues Devils Stay has though is just how many of them remain unexplained, with spooky goings on hinted at then seemingly dropped without any further explanation. When Shin-yang first visits Re in the morgue there’s surprise that rigor mortis has yet to set in, except for a tightly clenched fist in which I’d expected it’d be revealed she’s holding something significant. Well, she is holding something, but it has no bearing on the plot. Similarly the camera chooses to linger on the youngest son in a couple of scenes, hinting that perhaps the demon is going to shift into his body, but again it ultimately turns out to not mean anything.
It almost feels like horror movie trolling, although I don’t think any of it was intentional. Building up a sense of dread and the unknown is critical to any movie like this one, however there needs to be some meaning attached to the buildup, otherwise it just ends up feeling empty. Indeed the more Devils Stay progressed, the more it became apparent that some of its most promising moments may have been accidental rather than intended. A perfect example is how the finale appeared to be making the bold choice to take place in broad daylight, eschewing the traditional darkened rooms the genre usually ends up in, however it’s not long before the key players end up in a darkened boiler room. The choices frequently frustrate, resulting in a missed opportunity for Devils Stay to really differentiate itself from its peers.
It’s Lee Min-ki’s priest who’s subjected to the greatest disservice though. By far the most interesting character, being a former military chaplain who himself was once possessed during him time in the forces, the plot makes his appearances essentially serve as bookends. As an exorcist with limited powers due to his prior possession, his character feels far more compelling that Shin-yang’s in denial father, and there’s an inescapable feeling that the narrative would have been much more engaging if it was Min-ki we get to spend the most time with.
Despite the punchy 95-minute runtime proceedings come close to derailing in the final third. The buildup of creeping dread is swapped out for a somewhat ridiculous reveal involving a cult on the run from the Russian Orthodox Church (a fact which I found to be amusing in its specificness), and at one point Min-ki turns up and starts throwing down with a few of the cult members. Maybe in a future instalment we’ll see him team up with Park Seo-joon from The Divine Fury? (Plus, whatever happened to ‘The Green Exorcist’!?) Unfortunately the finale also plunges Devils Stay back into overly familiar territory, with Re’s corpse requiring another exorcism to get rid of the demon for good.
Apart from tried and tested lines like “don’t believe anything you see or hear” being thrown around, from an editing perspective the sequence feels messy. The narrative structure has relied on the frequent use of flashbacks to gain an insight into Re’s previous life, and Moon-seob appears to keep them going during the finale, except at some point I realised they’re not supposed to be flashbacks anymore, but rather visions the demon is making Shin-yang suffer from. The fact that there’s no differentiation between how the scenes are presented results in a sense of confusion as to if what we’re watching is supposed to be a moment from the past, or an illusion the demon is projecting onto Shin-yang, robbing the sequence of any tension due to the lack of clarity.
In the end Devils Stay offers up a perfectly serviceable if completely average slice of exorcism horror, the kind of movie that if someone asks you a question about a couple of days after watching it, you’ll struggle to answer as it’ll already have left the memory. Its greatest strength is Lee Min-ki’s priest, perhaps ironically because we don’t get to learn much about him, but get enough of a glimpse into his past to be left wanting to know more. For most people though, they’ll walk away from Moon-seob’s feature length debut feeling like it was a distinctly timid affair, when it could easily have been so much more.
Paul Bramhall‘s Rating: 5.5/10
