Vietnam finally getting a proper found-footage horror movie is enough of a reason to pay attention, but Lầu Chú Hỏa: The Deadliest Mansion also has the advantage of starting with a location that already comes with its own ghost story.
The film takes a group of young streamers into the abandoned Lầu Chú Hỏa mansion, a place associated with the legend of the Hứa family ghost, and turns their attempt to create scary online content into something considerably more dangerous – it was released in Vietnam on June 12, 2026, runs for 94 minutes, and, interestingly, is being described as Vietnam’s first found-footage horror film, where it will also be getting a North American release too.
From Livestream Content to Genuine Horror
The setup is deliberately simple here – a group of young streamers decide to enter the abandoned mansion and film their exploration, presumably expecting the usual mixture of creepy rooms, ghost stories and footage they can turn into content, but their intrusion awakens an evil spirit that CGV describes as having been sealed away for more than 100 years.
There is also a darker idea underneath the basic haunted-house setup, with the characters’ intrusion and behaviour becoming tied to greed, disrespect and consequences, rather than the ghost simply attacking people at random.
Trailer
Hùng Trần Makes a Particularly Interesting Choice for His First Found-Footage Film
Hùng Trần directs the film, with Trần Kỳ Anh, Nguyễn Minh Thời, Ngọc Chi Bảo, Phụng Hoàng, Nguyễn Công Nương and Dũng Hà making up the cast, but the really notable production fact, though, is the format itself – Vietnamese horror has obviously produced plenty of supernatural movies, but Lầu Chú Hỏa is being positioned as the first Vietnamese found-footage horror film, which makes the movie something of an experiment for the local genre scene.
That also makes the comparisons to other found-footage movies almost unavoidable.
The Real Legend Behind Lầu Chú Hỏa
The mansion gives the film something that a completely fictional haunted house wouldn’ – Lầu Chú Hỏa is connected to the famous Hứa family ghost legend, and the film uses that existing mythology as the foundation for its supernatural story.
The old mansion also provides a nice collision between Vietnamese ghost folklore and modern streamer culture – an old legend gets dragged into the world of cameras, livestreams and people hunting for frightening content.
It Hasn’t Been Universally Loved
The reception is actually more interesting than simply saying the film was a success – Moveek currently lists a 77% score, with 86 verified ratings averaging 7.70/10, so there is clearly a decent amount of affection for it among Vietnamese viewers, where some reviews specifically praise the atmosphere, cinematography and scares.
But there is plenty of criticism too.
One viewer complained that the characters repeatedly make the classic found-footage mistake of splitting up, while another thought the movie delivered tension but still had plenty of flaws, while others felt the film didn’t investigate the mansion’s history deeply enough, arguing that more documents, interviews or background about the Hứa family would have made the mystery stronger, which is probably the most interesting criticism because the movie has a genuinely rich piece of Vietnamese folklore sitting underneath it, so there is an argument that Lầu Chú Hỏa could have done more with that material instead of concentrating so heavily on the immediate scares.
The Found-Footage Gamble
This is where I think the movie becomes more interesting than its fairly familiar plot suggests, because found footage lives or dies by whether the camera feels like a believable part of the situation, and here a group of streamers provides an obvious excuse for everyone to keep filming, so at least the format isn’t being forced onto characters who would realistically have abandoned the camera ten minutes into the nightmare.
The reception suggests the approach has worked to a point, and while Lầu Chú Hỏa doesn’t appear to have reinvented found footage, but it is doing something worthwhile by bringing the format into Vietnamese horror and Vietnamese folklore, rather than simply copying the same haunted-asylum formula without adding anything local.
A Vietnamese Horror Experiment Worth Keeping an Eye On
There are definitely rough edges here it seems, and the criticism about the characters’ decisions and the lack of deeper exploration into the mansion’s history is fair, but the fact that Vietnam has produced its first found-footage horror film, attached it to a recognisable local ghost legend and actually put it into cinemas gives Lầu Chú Hỏa some significance beyond whether every scare works.
The result seems to be a film that doesn’t completely escape the conventions of found footage, but at least gives them a specifically Vietnamese setting and mythology to work with.
Check out some more Vietnamese horror movies.
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