[HanCinema's Film Review] "Dark Nuns"

One nuance lost in translation of "Dark Nuns" is that "The Priests" from 2016 has a very similar title. In Korean anyway. A literal translation would just be Dark Priests. Whether "Dark Nuns" is really a sequel or spin-off to "The Priests" I can't say. There aren't any shared characters as far as I can tell. The vibe is the same, as is the way the story centers around exorcism. But the new film is...how should I put it...a lot more bureaucratically complicated than the earlier title.

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Nuns don't generally act as exorcists. So when Sister Yunia (played by Song Hye-kyo) is first introduced as backup to the difficult exorcism of teenage Hee-joon (played by Moon Woo-jin), the question is immediately begged as to what her position in the church is. Other characters frequently question what Sister Yunia's position in the church is as well. And by the end of the movie, well, none of this actually mattered as far as I could tell.

The main reason why "The Priests" was such a big deal way back when was because it was really straightforward. The characters are called in to do an exorcism, and they do. "Dark Nuns" adds a lot of needlessly convoluted dimensions to this story. I don't just mean the gender thing, which on its own might have been tolerable. There's an entire shamanistic element to the story, as well as Buddhist influences, with lots of mostly pointless ambiguity as to what the nature is of the supernatural entity that's taken possession of Hee-joon.

There's a good idea for a movie in here somewhere, like, maybe Sister Yunia is the person that gets called in for demons who present so ambiguously that more formal authorities can't figure out whether the job is actually in their jurisdiction or not. Instead, "Dark Nuns" rather confusingly has many high status characters acknowledge that the demon inside Hee-joon is a major threat. Then they just don't do anything helpful anyway for no obvious reason.

This is as much of a problem with editing as it is with the script. Sister Yunia's meeting with a Vatican official, for example, begins before it's explained who this person is. Then after another scene explaining who the Vatican official is, we go back to Sister Yunia's meeting. Despite most of this scene requiring a translator, the final exchange doesn't. And I'm still not sure what the point of that meeting was, since I didn't see any of the artifacts they discussed being used in the actual exorcism.

What does feature in the actual exorcism is Ae-dong (played by Shin Jae-hwi), a stuttering shaman in training who's bad at ritual but good at faith, which makes him an excellent assistant for the job. Ae-dong has exactly one scene before we learn this, making for a very apt example of how "Dark Nuns" smothers its interesting ideas in the service of overly complicated worldbuilding. Oh, Jeon Yeo-been is in this movie too, and doesn't do as much as you'd expect given she has second billing.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Dark Nuns" is directed by Kwon Hyeok-jae, and features Song Hye-kyo, Jeon Yeo-been, Lee Jin-uk, Moon Woo-jin, Kim Guk-Hee, Shin Jae-hwi. Release date in Korea: 2025/01/24.