Parents' Guide to Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning

Almost as if by force of will, this South Korean animated fantasy mostly overcomes a story that's both familiar and convoluted and an animation style that looks like video-game cut scenes. Some of the characters in Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning slowly endear themselves to viewers, including Father Park, who finds himself on unfamiliar faith-based ground in the temple and who suffers from a guilty past. Lee Hyun-am's situation isn't fully explained, but we know that he's seeking revenge for his sister and owes his life to a sorceress (who gave years of her own life to save his). And young Jun-hoo is a highly talented spell-caster who's itching to try out his skills, suffocating under a domineering step-father and over-protective guardians. (In one scene, he escapes into the garden and enlarges his wooden toy animals to life-size for a game of chase.)

But the movie is being released in the United States in both Korean with English subtitles and with an English-dubbed audio track; the latter version, sadly, doesn't succeed as well as the former, quickly feeling agonizingly clichéd. But in Korean, the characters' simple arcs, accompanied by the original actors' voice performances, make them interesting enough to carry viewers through.