Phí Phông: Quỷ Máu Rừng Thiêng is a film that takes some weird piece of local folklore and builds the whole movie around it – Phí Phông, a mysterious blood-feeding entity from the folklore of mountainous areas in northern Vietnam – and rather than turning it into another generic vampire story, the film puts the legend inside a remote village where people are already familiar with the old stories.
That gives it a much better starting point for me.
Something Is Killing People in the Mountains
Còn and Dương are two apprentice shamans who travel into the mountains after their mother becomes the victim of a mysterious curse, where they eventually reach an isolated village where a very old story about the Phí Phông is starting to become a problem again.
The creature is said to be able to live among ordinary people while secretly feeding on blood and life force, and when a series of disturbing deaths begins, the old legend suddenly doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous, and suspicion eventually falls on Mon and her daughter Lua, two women whose appearance and strange characteristics seem to match descriptions associated with the Phí Phông.
But the deeper Còn and Dương investigate, the less straightforward things become – there are secrets hidden in the forest, old beliefs that haven’t disappeared and things about the village that people clearly don’t want outsiders asking questions about.
And that’s where I’m hoping the film gets properly creepy.
Trailer
A Rare Piece of Vietnamese Folklore
The Phí Phông is what really separates this from the usual supernatural horror story, because the legend is associated with mountainous communities in northern Vietnam and surrounding regions, where the creature is described as something capable of appearing human while feeding on blood or a person’s vital energy, and while obviously there are similarities with vampire folklore from other parts of the world, but that’s exactly why I find these regional variations interesting.
Pretty much every culture seems to have its own stories about something that looks human but isn’t quite human, but add in some little changes and different folklore, and suddenly you get something like the Phí Phông.
Two Shamans Against Something They Don’t Understand
The fact that Còn and Dương are apprentice shamans also gives the story another angle, because they’re not just two random people who wander into a haunted village and immediately start making terrible decisions, they have some understanding of spiritual practices and supernatural beliefs, but they’re still learning.
That means they can know more than the average person while still being completely out of their depth when they encounter something genuinely dangerous, and I think that’s a good position for horror characters to be i, because if they’re experts who know exactly what the monster is, what it wants and how to kill it, you’ve lost some of the mystery.
Give me characters who know enough to be frightened by what they’re seeing.
The Village Is Hiding Something
One of the things that caught my attention in the story is the relationship between the Phí Phông legend and the village itself, as this isn’t simply a creature appearing from nowhere – there’s a history here.
People have believed in the legend for generations, and there are apparently secrets connected to the forest and the community that Còn and Dương gradually uncover, and that’s where folk horror can get really nasty.
The supernatural threat is frightening, but sometimes the people who have been living alongside it for years are even more worrying.
Who knows what’s happening?
Who is protecting the secret?
And how long has everyone been pretending that nothing is wrong?
Those are the questions I’d rather have the film explore than another long explanation of how the monster works.
A Monster That Might Be Standing Next to You
The idea I like most here however is that the Phí Phông may be hiding among ordinary people, and that’s much creepier to me than having some obvious creature stalking the village – if the monster can look human, then everyone becomes a possibility.
And that gives the story a paranoid quality that should work really well if the filmmakers take their time with it, as I’d much rather have several scenes where you’re wondering whether somebody is actually the Phí Phông than have the creature revealed immediately and spend the rest of the movie watching it attack people.
A Proper Regional Folk Horror
Phí Phông: Quỷ Máu Rừng Thiêng is directed by Đỗ Quốc Trung and stars Kiều Minh Tuấn, Đoàn Minh Anh, Diệp Bảo Ngọc, Nina Nutthacha Padovan, NSƯT Hạnh Thuý, NSND Bùi Bài Bình, NSƯT Quốc Tuấn, Nguyễn Sỹ Hậu, Huy Tít and Tú Hồ – the film was produced by Bluebells Studios, with CJ HK Entertainment handling distribution, and was released in Vietnam on April 24, 2026., with a reported runtime of around 120 minutes.
Two hours is a fairly long running time for a horror movie, so I’m curious about how much of that is spent developing the mythology and characters rather than simply stretching out the scares, but if you’re going to make a folk horror movie based around an unfamiliar legend, giving yourself enough time to establish the community and the beliefs surrounding it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
But we shall see.
Check out some more Vietnamese horror movies.
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