Continuously reaching the hundred billion VND mark
On February 24, Huynh Lap's film "House of Ancestors" officially reached the 100 billion VND mark, the second fastest Vietnamese film to reach this milestone in 2025, after Tran Thanh's "The Four Guardians".
Currently, House of Ancestors is also the Vietnamese film leading the box Office Vietnam revenue rankings with nearly 5,000 screenings per day, far surpassing other films such as Dark Nuns - The dark Guard, Billion Dollar Kiss...
House of Ancestors tells the story of My Tien (played by Phuong My Chi) - a Gen Z girl working as a content creator. After many years, the character returned to the family home and suddenly saw the soul of the brother who had lost Gia Minh (played by Huynh Lap). From there, the two brothers planned to keep the house that was being disputed by relatives, while helping Gia Minh escape.
Although it still faces many mixed opinions, "House of Ancestors" also scores points for conveying spiritual and traditional cultural elements such as Southern Border Guard painting art, ancestor worship... The film does not exploit the direction of dark horror, heavy ghosts but the direction of spirituality, duy tribility and humorous situations.
Another horror film that has recently made an impression is The Heart Light by director Hoang Nam. Inspired by "The Story of Nam Xuong's Daughter", "The Heart Light" has a spiritual feel with a new approach, mixing spiritual and action elements. Released in theaters since February 7, up to now, the revenue of "The Heart Light" has exceeded the hundred billion VND mark and helped director Hoang Nam to be added to the list of hundred billion directors despite his first time entering the film industry.
Like House of Ancestors, Soul Light also exploits cultural elements, is a journey back to the roots, imbued with the color of folk culture, using spiritual elements to serve the direction of traditional culture.
The success of The Heart Light and House of the Ancestors is also partly due to the fact that these two films are considered a new breeze for Vietnamese cinema in early 2025. Before The Heart of the Heart, House of the Ancestors, Quy Cau released at the end of 2023 was the first Vietnamese horror film to reach the hundred billion VND mark, marking a new step forward for domestically produced horror films. Not only successful domestically, "The Devils" surpassed 335 entries to win the "Best Film" award at the Kanazawa Film Festival 2024.
The film also helped the crew win the "Best Production" and "Best Graphic Director" awards at Tuesday of Horror - a film festival that honors horror films; "Best Score" and "Best D better" awards at Sinister Horror Film Festival (Mexico)... "Ma Da", "Linh Mieu: Quy Nhap Trang", ... are also horror works with high revenue.
shortcomings to overcome
It can be seen that revenue is just one of the measures to evaluate the success of a film. A film with a revenue of hundreds of billions of VND and more also does not mean that the film is perfect, without shortcomings.
"The soul lights" made the audience regretful in the special effects and acting of the new cast and still caused a lot of controversy, such as the scene where the characters "changed", the scene where monsters appeared... The male lead Phu Thinh was criticized for lacking emotion in acting, especially in the first part of the film. Director Hoang Nam himself admitted that he was still confused when he first touched the film industry and would listen to comments with constructive comments to improve in later projects.
The special effects are also a weakness of the "House of Ancestors". In addition, the way "House of Ancestors" is handled with images and details is considered to be more impressive than online films.
Next, the script is still one of the weakest points of Vietnamese films in general and Vietnamese horror films in particular. The script lacks logic, sometimes very accommodating...
