Devils Stay - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Devils Stay



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
OK, maybe it’s just the writer in me, but does anyone notice that the word “Devils” in Devils Stay is not possessive? Maybe it’s a glitch in the printing, but more likely it seems to be weirdly intentional as even the press materials and IMDB have the word in the nonpossessive format. Not going to dwell too much on it, but my OCD tendencies literally started twitching like crazy when I noticed that. (end nerdy writers rant)

It could be me, but I have this nagging feeling that we’ve hit the glass ceiling for possession movies. Ever since the creepy 1960s and 1970s when the Satanic scare was going around, possession films have been sort of over-saturated. We’ve experienced classics like The Exorcist, The Exorcism of Jane Doe, Insidious, and many more that lean into that genre and have explored the nuances of spiritual possession for the better part of 60-plus years. So I kind of wonder if we’ve truly peaked. There are no more new tales to explore, and if so, we’re left recycling the same stories over and over again. If this isn’t true, then Devils Stay doesn’t do much to refute that claim, as it regurgitates a dozen better possession movie tropes throughout the 95-minute runtime, just in a Korean setting.

The film opens with the viewer watching the tail end of an exorcism on a young girl by the name of So-mi (Lee Re), only for the exorcism to strangely fail, causing the young girl to go into a seizure and subsequently cardiac arrest. However, renowned heart surgeon Seung-do (Park Shing-yang) refuses to come to grips with the fact that his daughter has actually died, pushing everyone away while he seems to pretend that she needs his help. His wife, the coroners, and even his friends beg the man to come to grips with reality, but Seung-do ignores them in his grief. But, as the three-day funeral progresses, he and the priest who botched the exorcism (Lee Min-ki) begin to see strange things about the body. Movements, ticks, and even visions that boggle the imagination. Father Ban (Lee Min-ki) delves deeper into the strange happenings, soon concluding that the spirit that had infested her may still be controlling the body. Not only that, he may have experienced this same demon in the past before with an army buddy. Now it’s up to the rogue Catholic priest to try and right his failures before its ultimately too late for everyone.

Devils Stay is a decent enough horror thriller but has a few quirks. The 95-minute film sadly exposition dumps most of the pertinent information into a single scene and subsequently opens up a puzzle box worth of questions that brings forth more questions than it ultimately answers. The film takes a risk by introducing a certain scene later on that brings forth a human element to the demonic possession, but sadly it's sort of a swing and a miss more than a true shocker. Also, it’s kind of strange that we have Catholic priests reporting to the Vatican in South Korea, and while I’m sure that there are some there, it felt really weird compared to the more traditionally superstitious South Korean possession tropes. Most of these are much more nuanced (if not a tad confusing at times if you’re not familiar with Korean mythology) than the typical “Catholic Priest trying to pull a demon out of a little girl” trope. That being said, it’s got some decent performances all around but suffers a lot from mediocre writing and overused tropes that don’t really hit home.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Not only would IMDB not give me information on who wrote the film but there is very little information on the resolution of the master, as well as what cameras were used for the shoot. Of course, it’s almost undeniably a digital shoot of some sort with a 2K digital intermediate for the master, but if anyone has any authoritative information otherwise I’d love to see it. That being said, this is a very solid-looking Korean film, with a heavy yellow filter that you commonly see in Asian films. Fine details are impressive, but there is a very dreamlike and hazy look to portions of the film by intention. Daylight scenes out of doors looks quite impressive, with sharp features and brighter colors, but inside the morgue and homes, it looks a bit more sterile and blue-hued. Black levels are very solid, although I noticed a few scenes that had some intermittent banding. Other than that, this is an impressive encode for Well Go USA.









Audio:

Unlike the usual, there is no English dub for this film, but rather the original Korean in 5.1 DTS-HD MA (and a downmixed 2.0 Dolby Digital track for night listening). Said track is more than exciting, with a rich bass track for the jump scares, and a rich and thick feeling surround usage. The ambiance is very creepy, with a somber score and plenty of creaks and moans going around the quiet morgue/hospital to keep things interesting. The vocals are clean and clear up front, and the mixing is near impeccable. I would have liked a few more discrete sounds in some of the non jump-scare scenes, but the 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is easily the highlight of the entire package.











Extras:

• Trailers and Teasers

Final Score:

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There’s an interesting enough story underneath all of the exposition and unnecessary twists later on in the tale, but at the end of the day, I had a hard time extracting a lot from this one. I really dig Korean horror films a LOT, but Hyun Moon-Sub’s possession thriller feels like it's imitating other Western possession horror films rather than trying to make something unique and his own. The watch is decent enough, but not worth much more than a rental in my opinion. Luckily the video and audio are very very good, with just the typical anemic trailers as the only extras on the disc.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Park Shing-yang Lee Min-ki, Lee Re
Directed by: Moon-Sub Hyun
Written by: ??
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: Korean: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Korean DD 2.0
Subtitles: English
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: NR
Runtime: 95 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: March 18th, 2025

Recommendation: Low Rental