Discover a pair Asian Film Debuts in the U.S.

A pair of hit films from Asia have made or are making their American debuts and I’ve gotten to take a look at each. They are wildly different in tone and quality, but each has their merits, and one in particular stands out.

Demon Hunters

While there are certainly some parts of the “language of film” that apply globally, the films of different countries usually have a style all their own. As such it’s interesting to see the various sensibilities blended together in international coproductions, such as the Taiwanaese-Indian collaboration Demon Hunters, the first team up between the nations.

Supernatural YouTuber Tommy (JC Lin) travels his home city to live stream from purportedly haunted locations, with the help of his girlfriend Alumi (Regina Lei), claiming to exorcise the spirits they find. When one such excursion leads them to encounter an actual haunting, they cross paths with Sanjay (Arjan Bajwa) and his grandfather, the legendary Indian exorcist Babaji (Jayanta Meetei) who are in the country on a quest. It quickly becomes apparent that their meeting was fated, as they will both be needed to battle the rising threat of a demon named Asura that has taken possession of young gang leader Fengji (Harry Chang).

Tommy is reluctant to get involved, believing that practicing the skills his grandfather taught him could lead to madness, but Babaji does his best to prepare him alongside Sanjay in the hope of banishing Asura for good. When the danger grows to put Alumi in peril, Tommy will have no choice but to finally accept his destiny.

The hybrid horror/fantasy/comedy/action story and the streaming-TV-quality lighting and special effects give the movie a vibe akin to campy hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a lot of the same cheesy charm. Director Mei-Juin Chen sometimes recalls the manic energy of Evil Dead-era Sam Raimi to great effect, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in Po-Jung Hua and Jun-You Wu’s predictable but effective story, though there are enough flaws to prevent the project from truly coming together into something memorable. ★★½

Not Rated. Contains bloody fantasy violence, and some language.

Source: JustWatch

Dear You

At the beginning of Hongchun Lan’s Dear You we meet Xiaowei (Zheng Runqi), a young Chinese man struggling with debt. With the help of his uncle he hatches a plan to rifle through his grandmother Ye Shurou’s (Wu Shaoqing) old letters to find the address of his absent grandfather, who had fled the country for Thailand in order to avoid conscription where he has allegedly since remarried and become very wealthy.

Once there however, Xiaowei quickly learns that the story he had believed was false and in flashbacks we experience the truth of his grandpa Zheng Musheng’s (Wang Yantong) life after he arrived in Thailand and fated upon the boarding house run by Xie Nanzhi (Li Sitong) and her father.

The allegedly low budget is not apparent on screen, as this is a gorgeously filmed family saga the likes of which we rarely see in stateside cinemas anymore. Initially expected to underwhelm at the Chinese box office, positive word of mouth propelled the film to the top of the charts where it has thus far earned enough money ($285million in China alone) to become the 15th highest grossing movie of 2026 in the world and it’s easy to see why.

The cast of unknowns deliver fantastic, naturalistic performances, making us care deeply for each of them. The story’s themes of family, community, and love give it universal appeal, while the more unique cultural touches such as the focus on qiaopi—letters containing money sent by Chinese living abroad back to their families—make it stand out. Likewise, the resilience of a mistreated refugee community should resonate with many and lends a tragic timeliness to the tale.

The film is openly manipulative with our emotions and almost completely devoid of subtlety, but it’s so effective and enthralling as it pulls us through the lives of its characters and gets us so involved in the triangle at its core that it proves impossible to resist. A moving and romantic testament to the ways that acts of kindness can have far reaching effects, rippling across space and time, this is a crowd pleaser that should especially appeal to fans of recent hit novels Theo of Golden and The Correspondent. As with those books, make sure to have the tissues handy. ★★★★★