Revelations (2025) Review

“Revelations” Netflix Poster

Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Cast: Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Min-jae, Shin Hyun-been, Han Ji-hyun, Kim Bo-Min, Kim Do-Young, Moon Ju-Yeon, Bae Youn-Kyu, Oh Chi-Woon, Woo Kang-Min
Running Time: 122 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The journey of Yeon Sang-ho as a filmmaker has been an interesting one. Gaining attention amongst cineastes in the early 2010’s for his gritty feature length animations like King of Pigs and The Fake, it was his transition to live action filmmaking that brought him to international attention, with the 2016 zombie movie Train to Busan. However in the years since he’s continuously struggled to find a consistent cinematic voice, with his switch to live action seeing him pivot from the grounded, reality-based nature of his animated features, to more fantasy, sci-fi, and supernatural infused flights of fancy. The major studios seem to have the same concerns, as with the exception of 2020’s Train to Busan sequel Peninsula, all of his subsequent work has exclusively gone straight to Netflix.

In fact it’s a safe bet to say no other Korean filmmaker has debuted on Netflix as much as Sang-ho has. Whether it be directing feature length productions like 2017’s Psychokinesis and 2022’s Jung-E. Helming drama series adaptations like Hellbound (the first season in 2020 as well as the second in 2024) and 2024’s Parasyte: The Grey. Or even stuff he just wrote the script for, like 2024’s 6-episode series The Bequeathed. All of them landed on Netflix, and in 2025 his latest feature length production once more skips a theatrical release, with Revelations similarly debuting on the streaming giant.

Interestingly Revelations is probably the most grounded work story wise that Sang-ho has done since his 2013 animated feature The Fake. The plot tells 2 parallel stories that gradually start to overlap with each other, with the first being of a pastor running a dilapidated church in a rundown part of Musan. Played by Ryu Jun-yeol (Believer, Alienoid), to say he has a lot on his mind would be an understatement. For a start his suspicions about his wife cheating on him look like they may be true, and exasperating his stress is the discovery of a mega church that’s being built not far from his own. His mentor is responsible for the new church, which should make him the natural choice to be selected as the pastor to run it, however it seems religious politics point to the mentor’s son being the preferred candidate. To top everything off, a convicted sex offender has just been released from prison and has moved into the local neighbourhood.

Played by Shin Min-jae (Smugglers, Killing Romance), when Jun-yeol’s daughter goes missing on the same day he unknowingly tried to sign up Min-jae to become a church member, Jun-yeol becomes convinced it’s Min-jae who’s responsible for her disappearance. The 2^nd plot involves a detective who’s recently been reinstated to the violent crimes division after some time off, played by Shin Hyun-been (Beasts Clawing at Straws, The Closet), whose sister was one of Min-jae’s victims. Haunted by visions of her sister’s ghost, Hyun-been seems to spend more time popping sachets of prescription pills and tracking Min-jae than anything else, however when both he and a young girl who attends Jun-yeol’s church go missing, she makes it her mission to get to the bottom of it.

It’s not a spoiler to say it’s Jun-yeol who’s responsible for the disappearance of Min-jae. After following him in his car up a remote mountain road, the pair end up in a tussle, with Min-jae slipping down the mountain and cracking his head open on a rock. Uncertain of what to do next, when lightening illuminates a nearby mountainside Jun-yeol is convinced he can see the face of Jesus, taking it as a sign that he’s doing the right thing. What unfolds is probably best described as a mix of Bill Paxton’s 2001 horror Frailty meets Kim Seong-hun’s 2014 thriller A Hard Day, as Jun-yeol becomes increasingly convinced that God is sending him signs, whether it be in the shape of the clouds or graffiti on a wall, so decides to cover his tracks. Meanwhile Hyun-been sees a chance to redeem the fact she couldn’t save her sister if she can get to the missing girl before it’s too late, but with minimal leads and the suspect missing in action, it won’t be easy.

In writing the synopsis I realise on paper it actually sounds like all the ingredients are there for a compelling supernatural tinged thriller, however Sang-ho has somehow managed to inject precisely zero narrative thrust into the 2-hour runtime, making it an exhaustingly plodding affair to get through. As a director and scriptwriter he’s dabbled with religious themes before with his series Hellbound which suffered from the same issues, and yet somehow that was granted a 2^nd season (which to me at least, is a bit like drinking an expired bottle of milk that’s been sitting in the sun for a week, then saying you’d like to have another one). Both are adapted from comics he also wrote, and perhaps it’s their translation to the screen where something becomes lost.

By far the most disappointing aspect of Revelations though is the question of who’s responsible for the missing girl’s disappearance, which for a good half of the runtime Sang-ho convincingly leaves the audience completely in the dark. It comes as something of a damp squib then, when it’s revealed it actually is Min-jae who kidnapped her, despite it seeming like an all too obvious narrative choice to have the actual kidnapper be the sex offender who’s just gotten out of prison. It seems to be a trait in Korean cinema that the thought of a prisoner becoming rehabilitated from the crimes they committed is unthinkable, so as soon as they’re released the expectation is they’ll be up to their old tricks in no time at all. Kim Joo-hwan’s Officer Black Belt, that also debuted on Netflix the previous year, suffered from the same issue, and here it simply feels lazy, with the built-up intrigue effectively being unintentional.

Despite the heavy-handed nature of everything onscreen, thankfully Jun-yeol offers up some entertainment value as the pastor who increasingly starts to lose it as the narrative progresses. If I had to guess, Jun-yeol’s inspiration for the role would be Aaron Kwok in Roy Chow’s 2009 slice of Hong Kong insanity Murderer. We’re not even halfway through and he’s already become a sweat drenched mess, yelling at his wife in the car to confess her sins, while belting out borderline hysterical prayers to the congregation when he holds a prayer meeting for the missing child. He admirably remains fully committed to the role no matter what ridiculous places it takes him, and by the time he’s wielding a steel pole while a tied-up Min-jae sings hymns at him in an abandoned golf resort, things have gotten pretty ridiculous.

Hyun-been is similarly committed despite the script at times working against her. The biggest issue is the ghost of her sister, played by Han Ji-hyun (I Bet Everything, Seobok), whose appearances feel like they should be quietly menacing, but instead end up coming across as gratingly annoying. Is this the first time for a ghostly apparition in Asian cinema to be an annoyance? Possibly. The biggest issue is her appearances mostly consist of her whining about why Hyun-been didn’t save her while she was alive, which starts to feel repetitive. However the coup de grâce is when she shows up in a scene where Hyun-been has been left alone with Min-jae, and descends into the kind of hysterical yelling usually reserved for scenes where a family member has learnt about the death of a loved one. For some reason, ghosts and hysterical yelling just isn’t a combination that works.

In the end it’s difficult to ascertain what the point of Revelations is, even with a Murderer-esque exposition dump from a psychiatrist towards the end who explains all about how everything is connected to past trauma, it fails to convince that everything that’s come before was worth watching. Consistently dull, frequently misguided, and narratively empty, the only revelation I hope comes from Sang-ho’s latest is that he re-assesses his direction as a filmmaker.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 2/10