Writer, director, and producer Attila Korosi sets Demon Dancer: Sua/Nara in an underground world where demons hunt human hosts, leaving wreckage in their wake. At the center of it is Sua, a Korean ballerina driven by grief and bound to a supernatural force.
Sua (Han Jiyeon) wakes up strapped to a research table, her fingers sawed off by a sadistic man recording the whole thing for “research” on human pain thresholds…but really, he is possessed by a demon. In her agony, she screams out the name of the demon, Nara (Anita Korosi), and she answers. Nara temporarily possesses Sua. She supernaturally reattaches Sua’s fingers, and with Sua’s dancer’s instincts and Nara’s supernatural force, the two fight together as one through a corridor of henchmen in a brutal first-person POV escape.
With Sua spent from exhaustion and a brutal beating, Nara coaxes her to a safe haven in an elevator shaft. Sua’s post-fight exhaustion brings back memories of her husband, Jack (Joseph Kim), an artist who had received a high-level curse from an unknown demon. It was his artist’s imagination, his only protection against the darkness circling him, seeking a way to possess him. When Jack finally succumbed, Sua was forced to kill him herself. Now she’s hunting the demon responsible, piecing together a trail to the demon and the man he possessed.
In order to find the demon, Sua reaches out to her mentor, Harmony (Shinyoung Moon), who helps inscribe Jack’s curse upon Sua, which allows Nara to possess her and take on a new set of skills as a demon hunter.
“…the two fight together as one through a corridor of henchmen in a brutal first-person POV escape.”
Demon Dancer: Sua/Nara is quite an ambitious project for a low-budget indie action movie. It clearly draws its inspiration from anime, interweaving an underground supernatural world of demons while infusing the fights with ballet.
Let’s talk about the action scenes. One impressive sequence takes place inside a real, descending car elevator — an Automated Parking System — with the fight choreographed and executed under actual operating conditions. Blue Dragon Award-winning action choreographer Gui-Duck Kwon staged the sequence and has called it a first-of-its-kind achievement in South Korean action cinema.
And yet, for a low-budget indie, the visual effects by Mike Hedayati are equally impressive — anime-style demon effects with decaying arms and faces, along with a few gross dissection scenes. Its budget is the film’s only real negative. Unless you’ve got a few million lying around, Demon Dancer just fell short of looking cinematic…or fake-looking cinematic. Everything is “almost” right, just barely touching the finish line in VFX, story, and acting. What excels is the fighting. Fast-paced, thrilling, and artistic at the same time. The film’s star is the action (and some creepy special effects), and that’s good enough for me.
For more information, visit the Demon Dancer: Sua/Nara official Instagram page.
"…Fast-paced, thrilling, and artistic at the same time."
