Ma Dong-seok's 'Holy Night' Flops at Box Office Amid Harsh Reviews
May 06, 2025
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Ma Dong-seok introduced the occult action film 'Holy Night: Demon Hunters' (hereinafter 'Holy Night', directed by Lee Yong-hee, Big Punch Pictures and Nova Films) on the 30th of last month to target the six-day golden holiday that led to Children's Day and Buddha's Birthday.
'Holy Night' is a story about a city confused by a group of vices, a dark fixer with a special ability, a holy night team that punishes a group of evil. Like the 'Crime City' series, which is based on a shocking crime true story in Korea, Ma Dong-seok himself planned, produced, and starred in 'Holy Night' was Ma's ambitious project with plans to expand to various IPs such as webtoons and games as well as movies. But the ambitious dream was a hollow Gangjeong, which was all about dreams as a result.
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According to the Film Council's integrated computer network of movie theater tickets on the 6th, 'Holy Night' mobilized only 85,679 people on the 5th, the peak of the Golden Week. The overall box office ranking is fourth. The cumulative total number of visitors is 585,023 people. It is extremely difficult to reach the break-even point of 2 million.
Of course, the box office defeat of the `Holy Night' was not the expected `Shock' from the beginning. Since Ma Dong-seok released four consecutive hit series 'The Crime City', the audience's expectations were as high as 'The Crime City' as 'The Rest Period' and filled the gap with 'The Holy Night'. Naturally, on the 30th of last month, the first day of its release, it overtook the box office hit and topped the list at once, proving the effect of Ma Dong-seok. However, the audience's evaluation was cold. 'Holy Night's box office is only on one day, and on the 1st, when the full-fledged holiday began, 'Holy Night' fell to second place in the box office, and remained in third place on the 2nd and fourth place from the 3rd to the 5th, drawing the audience's attention.
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Naturally, the reservation rate also fell \\\\\\\\' Neither the tempting subject matter of 'Guma Action' nor the box office cheat key of Ma Dong-seok was useless. As of 12 p.m. on the 6th, according to the real-time reservation rate of the movie theater admission network of the Korea Film Council, 'Holy Night' ranked sixth in the reservation rankings with an 8.2% reservation share and 17,032 reservation visitors. The theater, which is already out of the top five rankings, has become a wanderer. As the blockbuster 'Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning' (directed by Christopher Macquarie) is imminent, 'Holy Night', which was taken away from the number of screens it kept, will fail to fill 1 million people and will be kicked out.
Ma Dong-seok's complacency with 10 million viewers was cited as the biggest problem in this 'Holy Night'(22, directed by Lee Sang-yong)'The Outlaws 3'(23, directed by Lee Sang-yong)'The Outlaws 4(24, directed by Heo Myung-haeng). Novelty was a luxury in 'Holy Night', which took factory-style stories and plans such as villains who lead huge crimes and Maseokdo, the invincible to beat these villains with bare hands. It is laziness that makes the movie industry eat more of the movie industry where the freshness has disappeared.
'Holy Night' doesn't feel painstaking anywhere, such as the story, CG, and character. He squeezes and twists his body, and he is not a zombie, not a villain, but he is not a monster, but he is only struggling with the stop as Eunseo, who is in evil spirits. The villains who put their faces to Ma Dong-seok's fist have already been bored through the 'Crime City' series, and Ma Dong-seok's action of deceiving the audience only with a punch sound is also boring.
The movie organized by Ma Dong-seok is like a 'Bonsal Apartment' built by omitting steel bars to save material costs. It has been reduced to a movie with no skeleton and a lot of threadless action flesh. Aside from the sequel to the `Holy Night', Ma Dong-seok is currently planning the 'Crime City 8' episode. It has already completed five, six, and seven episodes, and five have begun filming, aiming to be released next year. Concern about the crime city 5 grew even greater through the 'Holy Night'. Ma Dong-seok must return to his original intention by engraving the audience's harsh evaluation of the popcorn movie once again.
soulhn1220@sportschosun.com
