The Divine Fury is a very bad film. It’s not poorly made; director Kim is mediocre, Cho Sang-yun’s photography is good, Koo Ja-wan’s score is fine. Yes, the editing is wanting, but often more because Kim’s mediocre than anything else. Like the big fight scene at the end? The big, very bad, not at all worth sitting through the movie about an MMA fighter (Park Seo-joon) taking on a Dark Bishop (Woo Do-Hwan) who’s running a shitty nightclub with low patronage (the film’s limited budget is only obvious because of the lack of background extras and scenery) and bringing demons to Earth. He brings the demons, who then possess Catholics–you know they’re Catholic because of the Catholic art on all their walls–and then priests come in and exorcize, rinsing the soul super clean, so Woo then sends those fresh souls to Hell.

Or the movie’s about a lonely old priest Ahn Sung-Ki who can no longer recruit young priests to accompany him on his exorcisms slash physical and mental abusing of people with mental problems… oh, wait, no, because in Divine Fury all the magic is real. Lead Park is an avowed atheist—not a real thing, as Ahn explains, because hating God means you believe in God—and none of the magic ever sways his opinion on God. He hates God because God killed his dad (Lee Seung-Joon) even though a priest told him if he prayed hard enough God would save him. So Park also hates the Catholic Church, which is the only form of religion shown to exist in Divine Fury’s South Korea.

Where Catholics make up something like seven percent of the population.

You know, it’d make more sense if Divine Fury were secretly funded by the Catholic Church in hopes they get priest recruitment up in South Korea. There’s a scene where Ahn brags about being able to drink and smoke—it’s okay as long as you don’t pray after, which is just weird too. When Park finally becomes a demon-hunting superhero with a motorcycle, his costume is a priest outfit like Park’s got some rabid female fans who want him dressed up as a bad boy priest. It’s really goofy and bad.

If Park gave an enthusiastic performance, Divine Fury might be saved. He’s got stigmata, he’s got a flaming fist, he can kill demons, he’s got that motorcycle, he’s edgy cool but not… he also doesn’t enjoy it at all. Some of it’s the direction. Kim’s not good at directing Ahn and Park with the special effects. Sometimes it looks like the actors decide at separate times when they’re supposed to be seeing the CGI demonic imagery. Even if Park were just an energetic bad, it might be fun. But no, he’s broody and terrible. Ahn’s ostensibly lovable and terrible. Woo’s not convincing as the chief bad guy, which is fine because Park’s not convincing as an MMA fighter and Ahn’s not convincing as an exorcising priest.

The only good performance in the film, which doesn’t give its cast good parts ever—the only good performance is Jung Ji-hoon. He’s this little kid who gets possessed by multiple demons. Jung’s great. Sadly we don’t get to see him kill the good guys and win and then the movie can end. Because then Park wouldn’t get his biker priest martial artist finale. The absurd finale he doesn’t even appear to enjoy doing.

Divine Fury is ostensibly a martial arts horror action Catholic Christian movie. The horror’s never scary, the martial arts are bad, the action’s bad. All it does with enthusiasm is preach, which could conceivably not be terrible if only Kim’s script weren’t terrible and Ahn and Park weren’t bad, particularly during those scenes. If the movie has some actual propaganda behind the scenes thing going on, at least it’d make sense. Otherwise… it just wants to be bad.

And excels at it.

Except Jung; Jung’s amazing.