In contrast to the Korean psychological thrillers slated in the 29th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival (“Fantasia”) via Finecut distributors, Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy (2025) and Holy Night: Demon Hunters (2025) represent the opposite end of the genre spectrum with spectacular optics aimed at pop cultural trends, namely webtoons.
The Canadian premiere of director and co-writer Kim Byung-woo’s Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy (2025) brings to Fantasia’s big screen the addictive pleasures of smartphone webtoons, the episodic digital comics (i.e., web novels) originating in South Korea that have gained in international popularity through easy internet access. Adapted from singNsong's eponymous webtoon (singNsong being the pseudonym for the married couple who co-authored the popular web novel (i.e., manhwa) "Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint" and "The World After the Fall"), Byung-woo’s filmic treatment holds true to the manhwa’s premise of a fan’s unexpected immersion into the world that he has read about faithfully for years while commuting to and from work.
As events in his manhwa begin to suddenly play out in his “real” life in Seoul, shy, discreet office worker Dok-ja (award-winning K-drama star Hahn Hyo-seop) has the advantage—as the manhwa’s most devoted reader—of knowing what’s going to happen before it happens and who the key players are. Knowing the rules of this digital universe inside-out, Dok-ja seeks to help his fellow Seoulians but rapidly discovers that omniscience doesn’t mean he can be a passive observer. Just because he is omniscient does not mean he’s a god; only the author—Dok-ja understands—is god, but the author is giving him an opportunity to rewrite the manhwa’s ending. In order to do so, Dok-ja has to engage in the events unfolding before him, acquiring power through video game acuity and skill, and adjusting to the dangerous shift from familiar events to the unfamiliar. Knowing that in the original manhwa everyone dies when the omnipotent hero Jung-hyeok (Lee Min-ho) dies, Dok-ja realizes he must change the ending of the story and make the story his own if he is to survive. His challenge is to convince Jung-hyeok, who disbelieves that a mere reader can alter the manhwa’s narrative trajectory.
Although death games have been part of the filmic landscape since Kinji Fukasaku shocked the filmic world with Battle Royale (2000), audiences have come to enjoy the myriad ways in which young characters battle it out in inventive scenarios, whether Hunger Games, or more recently Squid Game. But Omniscient Reader leans into new territory with its meld of Korean pop culture with folklore. An overtly cute but sinister dokkaebi (a mischievous, goblin-like creature with supernatural powers) introduces the ground rules of the scenarios that will determine the fate of humanity caught in Dok-ja’s manhwa-made-“real”; a reality adjudicated by “Constellations” out in space who are bemused by the follies of the human race and seek to either favor them with sponsorship or punish them.
The special effects are spectacular and the action sequences exciting: giant sea monsters sever bridges, an ichthyosaur swallows our protagonist whole (like an Irwin Allen retro-update), a giant praying mantis pursues him, as do tentacle-faced demons, and the film’s final scenario is a mind-blowing stand-off with a Luciferian fire dragon in a Seoul subway station. This adrenalin-paced Korean blockbuster fully satisfies.
Though thoroughly and successfully aimed at sheer kinetic entertainment, Holy Night’s Catholic underpinnings made me question the religion’s presence in South Korea. I discovered that Catholicism is the second largest Christian denomination after Protestantism, with approximately 11% of the population identifying as Catholic. Thus, it was not at all out of the ordinary that a trio of extraordinary exorcists called Holy Night would have ample opportunity to pull out all the stops and chew up the scenery with the ritual tropes familiar to American audiences through The Exorcist franchise: you know, the possessed girl with stringy hair bound to a chair duplicitly preying upon the psychological frailties of her captors, the sudden drops to sub-zero temperatures whenever evil enters the room, the cussing, the agonized screaming as the exorcists demand the demon leave the girl’s body, demand the demon name itself, the guilt tripping, the possessed girl suddenly breaking free and skittering crab-like down the hall and up the wall, all those things fearful Catholics pray will not harm them.
I laughed outloud when one of the exorcists pointedly asks a demon: “Are you Korean?” (That’s what actually prompted me to investigate Catholicism’s presence in South Korea; I mean, it seemed like such a sensible and honest question and I wanted to know the answer.)
Kudos to Lim Dae-hee’s animated coda that honors and provides a visual sense of the webtoon format.
