I hadn't heard about this 2021 Vietnamese movie titled "Thiên Than Ho Menh" (aka "The Guardian") from writers Kay Nguyen and Victor Vu prior to sitting down in 2023 to watch it. I stumbled upon the movie by random luck, and with it being an Asian horror movie that I hadn't seen, of course I opted to sit down and watch it.
Well, half of it anyway. Running at 127 minutes, this movie was slow paced, boring and uneventful. I have to say that it was quite a struggle to sit through just more than an hour of virtually nothing happening. Well, nothing in terms of being a proper horror movie that is. If you want to watch a drama movie about pop singers laced with some supernatural folklore, then this is a movie for you. If you watch it for a horror movie, you're in for a sore disappointment.
The storyline in the movie was just lacking drive and force. It took director Victor Vu forever to go nowhere. And I mean that literally. I gave up on watching the movie just after 1 hour into the ordeal. I just simply couldn't take more of the torment that is "Thiên Than Ho Menh", because nothing happened.
The acting performances in the movie seemed good enough. However, I wasn't really buying into what was happening on the screen, given the mind-numbingly slow pace of the narrative, and the fact that the script had zero appeal or horror contents. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie.
Visually then you're not in for any particular outstanding treat here.
I have zero intentions of returning to waste yet another hour on this movie, because there was nothing to entertain me here. If you enjoy Asian horror movies, do yourself a favor and give "Thiên Than Ho Menh" a wide berth.
My rating of "Thiên Than Ho Menh" lands on a three out of ten stars, and that is mostly based on the production value of the movie and the acting in general.