Devils Stay Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Devils Stay Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 14, 2025

Whether or not Devils Stay should have made its title possessive may bug some folks (ahem), but there are probably bigger fish to fry and/or demons to exorcise as the case may be with this intermittently effective Korean horror film which kind of tips The Exorcist on its (spinning?) head. Speaking of things "bugging" folks, this outing somewhat hilariously follows in the questionable "tradition" of Heretic by offering a repeated trope of butterflies (or probably more accurately in this instance, moths), which as with the Hugh Grant film may not rise to the metaphorical heights of similar usage in, say, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Devils Stay actually begins with a quick cut montage documenting, well, it's not completely clear, but the upshot is a little girl named So-Mi (Lee Re) is being exorcised by a priest named Father Van (Lee Min-Ki), a process which initially seems to be successful, until So-Mi has a seizure of some sort and dies. Her family, notably her heart surgeon father Cha Seung-Do (Park Shin-Yang), is understandably distraught, but things soon become even more unsettled when it turns out Cha, who recently performed a heart transplant on So-Mi, believes his daughter isn't really dead. Some interesting cultural elements start entering the fray courtesy of the Korean tradition of three day funerals, a timespan which allows Cha to continue trying to "resurrect" So-Mi as Father Van also begins questioning things. It turns out Van has some "exorcism" history of his own, in terms of evidently once having been possessed himself, in just one of several "but wait you also get" plot stuffing that probably diverts attention from the main storyline. Maybe just a little comically, the underlying conceit here seems to be a callback to "possessed body part" films like The Beast with Five Fingers. There are some definite moments of unease throughout this offering, but especially in the climax things devolve to basic "startle" material with sudden changes accompanied by loud sound effects.

Devils Stay Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Devils Stay is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. As of the writing of this review the IMDb has not pertinent technical information and I haven't been able to find anything authoritative online, but this is an appealing looking digital capture that I assume had a 2K DI. There are a number of quasi-hallucinatory effects sprinkled throughout the tale, including a number of weird quick cut montages that offer unsettling imagery and other bells and whistles like skewed framings and blurring around the edges of the frame. Those are about the only moments where detail levels can understandably falter. Otherwise, even in some less than fulsome lighting, as in the red drenched climax, fine detail tends to be commendable throughout. Some of the CGI with the moths isn't especially believable. The palette is nicely suffused throughout.

Devils Stay Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Devils Stay features a nicely immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. The increasingly nightmarish world the story offers, including those aforementioned quasi-hallucinatory elements, offer some nice channelization of panning effects as well as some of those also aforementioned startle effects (a quick whooshing noise is especially effective at a couple of key moments). Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Devils Stay Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:19)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Additionally, packaging features a slipcover.

Devils Stay Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's actually a good deal of interesting material in Devils Stay, though it increasingly gets buried (no death pun intended) under the weight of a bunch of extraneous information. There are too many "secrets" in both Van's and Cha's backgrounds to wallow through, and unfortunately the film tends to rely on hoary tropes like startle effects as things build to a chaotic conclusion. Technical merits are solid for anyone considering making a purchase.