EXORCISM CHRONICLES: THE BEGINNING

Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning, Viva Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 16, 2025

It will be interesting to see whatever follows Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning, which is, as the title announces, more of a prologue than anything else. To be sure, Lee Dong-ha's screenplay, based on long-running book series by Lee Woo-hyeok, features a plot that involves a great threat for our heroes to defeat, but that only seems to really matter in the third act, after we become somewhat acquainted with those heroes.

This becomes a string of introductory moments, essentially, as we learn about the pasts, tactics, and supernatural powers of a Catholic priest and a young tai chi master, before we eventually discover that there's a third member of the demon-fighting team that will barely form at the story's end. During the credits, an extra scene lets us know that yet another character, who appears in the backdrop of a couple scenes involving the priest, is also important. Since the movie has been so busy with everyone and everything else, we'll just have to wait to find out, though, who she is, apparently.

While this is certainly a frustrating way to tell a story, director Kim Dong-chul's computer-animated movie can be quite compelling, especially in its visual style, which features realistic backgrounds and character designs that have the look of a highly detailed graphic novel coming to life. It certainly helps a lot that the demons, who are the implicit stars of the material in a certain way, and their designs, not to mention their deeds, are so wicked and horrific that the movie's grim sense of spectacle is undeniable.

As such, let's start with the two main demons of this tale. One is a throwaway character, used to introduce Fr. Park (voice of Choi Han). The priest was, as we're told repeatedly without much specific detail, a doctor who, after failing to save a young girl from an apparent demonic possession, hung up his white coat for the black attire of a Catholic minister. His main job, it seems, is to wander the land, looking for signs of demons and fighting them with the power of his faith.

One such demon has inhabited the body of another priest, and Park deduces this from the darkness and smell of rotting meat inside the clergyman's church. While in middle of a service, Park storms into the chapel, surrounded by dark smoke from his incense burner and armed with a rosary that blasts green energy when he shouts prayers loudly enough. After seeing so many movies in which exorcism scenes all start to look and sound the same, the over-the-top nature of this one is quite refreshing. It's more like something out of a Japanese anime (The movie itself, like its source material, comes from South Korea) than the usual chamber melodrama of most exorcism movies.

As for the demon, it is, well, a big boy—a towering, lanky monster that has sickly white skin, stands far above the church's altar, and has a thick ring like an unholy halo, with ripped pages of what might be scriptures fluttering around it, protruding from its back. One of the reasons animation of any sort is such a vital medium is its ability to show us things that are only limited by its creator's imagination, and when that demon emerges from the swirling incense, the promise of this material and its execution suddenly bloom in front of us along with it.

The movie has other horrors and terrors in store, for sure, including Master Seo (voice of Hwang Chang-yung), the head monk at a hidden temple in the mountains, and his plans to channel some dark magic to become a powerful, unnatural entity. We meet that character before anything else in this story, as he oversees the ritual sacrifice of a calf and drags the beast's severed head to draw some ancient symbol in blood on the ground. The sights and sway of the story's evildoers are so striking, indeed, that our heroes barely stand a chance in terms of coming across nearly as intriguing.

To wit, we have Park, who is called to the temple by his old friend and monk Jang (voice of Hong Seung-hyo) to help fight against Seo's dastardly schemes, and Heyon-am (voice of Nam Doh-hyeong), that aforementioned tai chi practitioner who is seeking vengeance against a demon that killed his sister. There might be something more to these characters, but in what's announced as merely a first entry in a series of tales, only the basics of their powers and back stories actually matter here.

The other important character is a boy named Jun-hoo (Jung Yoo-jung), Seo's adopted son and acolyte, whom Jang believes is actually in grave danger from his master. The boy's significance is entirely as a plot device, until some revelations in the third act suggest he could have a greater role to play down the line.

The narrative of Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning is constantly torn between setting up some bigger picture, as well as future installments, and actually telling a story that stands on its own. The split means the movie doesn't really succeed at doing either, leaving us with a group of protagonists who seem to be in limbo and a world of demonic evil that overshadows everything else. The visuals and action involved in that second part almost make the movie worthwhile, regardless.

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