The 8th Night (non-spoiler) Review

Did I hate The 8th Night? No. Did I love it? Also no.

The 8th Night is the story of Park Jin Soo (Lee Sung Min), a former monk who has been summoned to help rid the world of a centuries-old demon that has been reawakened. He is joined by a monk Cheong Seouk, played by Nam Da Reum.

I’m having a hard time trying to review this movie because while I didn’t think it was a bad movie, and could see how a lot of people would connect, I didn’t find it really that memorable. 8th Night is weird in that the first quarter of the movie is set up more like an adventure action movie, as the artifact is found and the monks tell the stories voiced over graphics. It doesn’t give you a sense of where the movie is going, or even where it’s trying to go. I was left in this weird state of confusion because we really weren’t doing much of anything.

Not only does the story take a while to actually progress, it also takes a while for it to be scary. And by a while - save a few instances of weird faces - the only horror you get out of the movie is in the last 20 minutes. With not much build-up or tension, the movie falls flat as a horror. Trailers are a notoriously terrible judge on what the movie is going to be, and this movie was no exception. There is no tension during the first hour or so because most of it is unnecessary, drawn-out plot. It spends most of its time focusing on the stories, but doesn’t really need any of that exposition to understand what is going on or even take the story to where it needed to go. It’s the movie’s major flaw.

Don’t go into it thinking the movie you are seeing in the previews is the movie you receive. I wanted a bit more intrigue and better pacing, and a lot more horror than was presented in the movie. The fact that most of those things only appeared in about the last 20 minutes of a two-hour movie was too much work for not a lot of payoff. In the end, it fell flat and uninteresting. I was really hoping for a lot more than this.

If you have a free two hours, or like backstory-heavy slow exorcism movies watch this, but I’d skip it if I didn’t have the free time.

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