Within just three minutes of the running time, the aforementioned hit and run accident has taken place, followed just seconds later by two high octane car crashes involving the same automobile.Īs such, viewers have a sufficient adrenaline rush very early on to allow the film to take a breath after a highly evocative credit sequence – complete with organ music, religious chanting and visuals of (seemingly) medieval paintings and drawings of demons, devils and tormented victims – to spend a sufficient amount of time to introduce the main characters and background story.

Korean films, on a fairly regular basis, could be said to start at a noticeably slow pace – building increasingly as the narrative progresses – but that certainly isn’t the case in ‘The Priests’. Unable to contact the Korean priest of the time who dealt with exorcisms, they set out to stop the demon themselves and in doing so set off a chain of events that directly result in Young-shin’s terrible predicament, though we are not aware of that fact until somewhat later in proceedings when we see a specific scene replayed in flashback from a somewhat different camera angle. ‘The Priests’ begins with two Italian priests discussing, in hushed tones, 12 malevolent spirits responsible for suffering and tragedies around the world and the fact that one has supposedly shown itself (so to speak) in Korea.

The priests