Revenue is shared among many genres, from history, revolutionary warfare, action, detective - horror to family affection. This distribution not only shows that audience tastes are more diverse, but also reflects a positive reality: the production capacity of the market has been stretched, forcing filmmakers to compete with quality instead of relying on consumption habits.
Problems for historical and revolutionary war films
The biggest shift of 2025 lies in the rise of historical and revolutionary war films. From being considered niche audiences, heavily focused on propaganda tasks, this genre suddenly became the main force of the box office. The work "Red Rain" (directed by Dang Thai Huyen) reached the milestone of about 714 billion VND, creating a record for Vietnamese film revenue in the year and surely this milestone is still long, if not impossible, for other filmmakers to overcome it.
Previously, "Peach, Pho and Piano" (directed by Phi Tien Son) opened up a different approach to history, telling stories, leading with emotion, restrained statements, so that every detail in the film speaks for itself. In 2025, that spirit continued to be extended with the film "Road: Sun in the Dark" (directed by Bui Thac Chuyen) with revenue of over 200 billion VND for the film genre that was once considered "hard to sell for tickets".
Rainy Red" has brought the audience a fairly complete film experience: Heavy scenery, invested fine art design, coherent narration and stories touching collective memories. When these 3 factors converge, history is no longer a burden, but becomes a material rich in attraction.
However, the success of 2025 also poses challenges for 2026. History is an easy land to repeat. If you continue to exploit familiar motifs, recounting events that have been "framed", this film genre is very likely to fall into a state of saturation.
In 2026, historical and revolutionary war films force filmmakers to innovate deeply with perspectives and characters: Few "overviews", many "identities"; few events illustrations, many internal conflicts. And especially, there must be exploration in cinematic language expressed in novel and creative narration. Otherwise, the box office advantage of 2025 will quickly become an overwhelming pressure.
Action film, from experimental to standard
In 2025, action films also affirmed their solid position in the Top "popular" films. Vietnamese cinema has witnessed quite methodical investment action works, exploiting fast and strong rhythms, while incorporating stories with social materials or inspiration from real events, creating curiosity highlights for audiences.
Like the movie "Death in the Air" (directed by Ham Tran), inspired by aviation security cases, grossed more than 250 billion VND and entered the Top highest-grossing Vietnamese films of the year. A movie that suffocates, attracts audiences from beginning to end, enough to keep them for two hours...
The success of action movies is now not simply about spectacular punches and kicks, but depends on the design of the setting, music, filming images, script logic and exploiting the psychology of the characters, which modern audiences are increasingly demanding. When the market is larger, the factor of industrializing production, from scene editing to special effects and music mixing, will be a measure of capacity for the action genre in 2026.
When audiences are used to fast pace, concise scenes and strong images, they will find it difficult to accept action movies that are sloppy in logic or lack clear characters. If 2025 is the year to prove that Vietnamese action movies can be as attractive as Hollywood action movies, then 2026 is the year to affirm that the Vietnamese action film genre continues to move forward steadily, not just a temporary rise.
Horrifying - detective: Refreshing the old "gold mine
Horror and detective are still the "gold mine" of Vietnam's box office in 2025, especially among young audiences. Mysterious and mysterious stories, associated with supernatural phenomena or psychological and horror-filled investigations, always have the ability to attract audiences to theaters and create a viral effect on social networks.
Among them, the movie "Detective Kien: The Unprecedented Case" (directed by Victor Vu) is a prominent example, entering the Top of highest revenues of the year, thanks to combining detective - horror elements in a deeper depth than just focusing on jump-scare. However, this genre is also easily saturated. Many products only rely on cheap horror elements or repeat old formulas, making viewers quickly bored. In 2026, the horror - detective film genre is still attractive, but the quality of scriptwriting and new ideas will determine whether this genre can maintain its attraction or not. The possible direction is more systematic detective investigation, or psychological - social horror, where fear comes from people and the living environment. Indigenous cultural elements, space, cultural memories are still advantages, but only really promoted when told in modern cinematic language.
Family romance movies always have a foothold
The movie "Father's House" (directed by Huynh Lap) is a blockbuster in 2025 thanks to a director with experience in making spiritual and comedy films and some young faces with humanistic messages about family affection. The movie "Lat mat 8 - Vong tay nang" by director Ly Hai, still maintains its revenue form, but is a step back for the director in storytelling language. Notably, the movie "Nu hon bac ty" - the debut work of female director Thu Trang, who is a charming actress with a story about love and family that is quite interesting despite having illogical details. The remake movie "Mang me di bo" also takes advantage at the box office thanks to a solid, emotional plot of motherhood.
However, audiences always have an increasing demand, so family romance films to continue to be competitive must innovate in storytelling and need to directly reflect the pressures of urban life, modern families, generational gaps, and issues that audiences are actually experiencing.
From the reality of the Vietnamese film market with "popular" genres in 2025, it can be predicted that 2026 will be a harsher year with many challenges for filmmakers. When the revenue ceiling has been raised, failures also become more expensive: Weak films will drop in screenings quickly, be eliminated early and have difficulty having the opportunity to "run the long distance". All film genres must have new ways to attract audiences, in the long-distance race, so that the Vietnamese film market truly grows stronger with "blockbusters" of box office revenue.
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