‘Tharae: The Exorcist’ review: Thai horror blends familiar possession narrative with religious folklore

Dir: Taweewat Wantha. Thailand. 2025. 118mins

How much faith can someone reasonably be expected to keep when confronted by persistent misfortune, both personally and within their community? That’s the question at the heart of Thai writer-director Taweewat Wantha’s theological horror mash-up, Tharae: The Exorcist, which sees an ancient demon return to terrorise a Thai Catholic village. A familiar narrative is buoyed by a welcome injection of Thai folklore that makes the film less about exorcism and possession, and more about religious harmony.

 Buoyed by a welcome injection of Thai folklore 

Tawaeet travelled largely in cult filmmaker circles following his 2004 horror-comedy debut SARS Wars until he broke out with 2023’s box office hit Death Whisperer and its 2024 sequel, which ranks as the biggest Thai film of all time at the local box office. (The third in the series, directed by Thanadet Pradi and Narit Yuvaboon opened Bangkok International Film Festival, where Tharae also plays in Thai Panorama). Those films earned a combined THB1.3bn (US$40m) in Thailand, and eventually made their way to major streamers like Netflix.

The director demonstrates a continuing knack for creative gore in the thematically ambitious Tharae, which recalls Jang Jae-hyun’s religious thrillers The Priests (2015) and Exhuma (2024). Having opened in Thailand in August, Tharae is now rolling out across the region and should continue to chime with Asia Pacific audiences for whom ghost lore is a familiar horror element. Further afield, streamers should also come knocking.

A prologue sees a young Catholic priest trying and failing to exorcise a demon from a pre-teen girl, which ends in him helping the girl’s mother to kill the child in order to prevent the demon from possessing someone else. This holy murder is a novel and thought-provoking springboard to questions about piety, suffering and retribution, but Taweewat never dives under the surface. Instead, he falls back on hoard possession tropes and some admittedly gooey gore for most of his storytelling.

The main part of the narrative unfolds in northeastern (or Isan) Sakon Nakhon province, where Yao folk religion thrives. It is also the location of Tharae, home of Thailand’s largest, oldest Catholic community. (In reality, the town is partially administered by the Roman Catholic Church). When Tharae native Malee (Nichaphat Chatchaipholrat, who gets little to do beyond crouching over entrails) gets a frantic phone call from her aunt Saeng (Sawanee Utoomma), she heads to her hometown to check up on her deathly ill father.

Her father is Old Ming (Thaneth Warakulnukroh), a former priest who gave up the cloth 40 years earlier following the disastrous exorcism witnessed in the prologue. He also turned to black magic at some point after marrying Malee’s now-dead mother, but now he’s just seen as a raving lunatic. Malee – and the rest of the villagers – want nothing to do with him; at least until the vengeful demon returns and possesses him, also targeting Malee.

Saeng is tired of the constant tussle between good and evil, so she reluctantly agrees to call upon showman shaman Sopha (Phiravich Attachitsataporn, Taweewat’s Death Whisperer 2) to help them banish what they think is a spirit. At the same time, the local archdiocese calls on by-the-book priest and exorcist Father Paolo (television star Jirayu Tangsrisuk), whose own private demons make him a dour contrast to Sopha’s often clanging comic relief. The entity turns out to be too much for the Catholic and the Yao practitioners to handle individually, but manageable when they work together.

The push, pull and ultimately respectful balance between Catholic dogma and animist Isan folklore is the glue that holds Tharae: The Exorcist together (Taweewat had Yao folklore and Catholic consultants on the crew). Once Paolo and Sopha start to unravel the (not terribly surprising) family secrets that are coming back to haunt Ming and Saeng, Tharae falls into familiar patterns and deploys familiar genre mechanisms – albeit with plenty of blood and some cringe-inducing body horror for fans to appreciate.