On the face of it, Demon Dancer: Sua/Nara sounds like a fascinating project. With a dancer in the lead role who has chosen to share her body with a demon in order to seek revenge, there’s a lyricism to the production that is tremendously appealing. But unfortunately, low production values, a badly translated script, and amateurish acting prevent Demon Dancer from reaching its potential.
Demon Dancer opens on a tough moment to watch: Sua (Jiyeon Han) is being tortured, and the demon Nara (Anita Korosi, sister of the film’s director Attila Korosi) is begging Sua to let her in. If Sua agrees to join forces with Nara, she’ll not only be able to defend herself, but get some answers about the tragedy that has surrounded her life. Together, the two are nigh-on unbeatable – and it’s only by working together that Sua stands a chance of escaping the curse that claimed the life of her husband.
Although anime fans and martial arts enthusiasts may find some of the more physical elements to their liking, the overall production of Demon Dancer is more than a little hamfisted. From the very first scenes, the camerawork is haphazard and clunky, looking more like a student film than something professionally developed. Throughout the film, there are baffling decisions made, largely pertaining to the script itself. All the dialogue reads like it’s been put into Google Translate, and then delivered by actors who have only glimpsed at their pages in passing. Amateurish in the extreme, the filmmakers make choices throughout that expose their inexperience. The decision to begin the film in the middle of the narrative, for example, cuts off its world-building and mythology at the knees, throwing us into a story we have little time to appreciate and forcing characters we’ve barely met to deliver clumsy exposition pretty much directly to camera.
The action sequences seem designed to mimic an anime, and while they do the best they can with choreography and special effects, it would take a more experienced director to truly do justice to its aspirations. The one thing in Demon Dancer worthy of note is its makeup design for the demon herself – clearly a great deal of time and effort has gone into giving her a memorable aesthetic, and she’s a triumph of practical makeup effects. It’s definitely a film that emphasizes style over substance – it’s just a shame that there wasn’t more of an effort made at blending the two.
Directed by Attila Korosi
Starring Jiyeon Han, Anita Korosi, Joseph Kim, Jungchal Jun, Shinyoung Moon
Runtime 95 min
Language English