Well Go USA is about to unleash the sequel to the Korean exorcism thriller “The Priests,” titled “Dark Nuns,” in North America. So they figured they’d put the original 2015 hit out there for people who want to catch.

Not a bad idea, as that film may be easy enough to follow, but writer-director Jang Jae-Hyun (“Exhuma”) so cluttered his narrative with so many characters and bits of back story that it’s hard to keep track of who is whom. It takes some adjustment to get into the “style” of storytelling.

Naming more than one character “Park” in a Korean film is just plain mean.

A prologue shows us that Italian priests have taken their shot at this one Korean case and failed. They got the demon out, tucked it under one priest’s cassock for disposal (all becomes clear in the third act) and didn’t get it across the finish line.

One maverick Korean priest (Kim Yoon-seok of “Escape from Mogadishu”) has plunged into the case of the teen girl (Park So-dam of “Parasite”) and failed. Her allegations of “touching” were an added difficulty, with what the world knows about priests and this particular demon knowing what accusation to make.

Other priests and deacons have come and gone as this child’s possession keeps her in a coma between exorcisms. But they all took notes and recorded cassette tapes of their efforts.

Young, eager and perhaps troubled Deacon Choi (Gang Don-won of ““Peninsula”) is the latest recruit, summoned and cajoled by a church heirarchy trying to keep this entire enterprise off the books and out of the news.

Tactless, jaded Kim isn’t impressed by the new guy.

“You look like a Mormon,” he mutters (in Korean with English subtitles). “Idiot” becomes his nickname for the young guy, who starts to see things the moment he looks into the case and long before he meets the victim. That makes him qualified for the work.

The novelties of this 2015 film are its droll, sarcastic humor and the distinctly Eastern touches added to all the vomiting/bed-levitating tropes of the genre. A little Buddhism and a sprinkling of shamanism and the like suggest that the Civilized East has been dealing with these devils since before the Vatican, William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin got involved.

Demons are typically lions, snakes or scorpions and can’t be destroyed. The best you can hope for is to trap them in another animal’s body and toss them in a river “at least 15 meters wide.”

Yeah, they’re damned specific, or so Father Kim says as he has Deacon Choi ring a bell made by the founder of their order, St. Francis of Asisi as part of the ritual.

Kim is sanguine about what it will take to defeat this “5,000 year old bastard,” and Choi’s stomach, spine and will shall be tested in the battle. Is he up to it?

The film begins in gloom and mystery, drifts around interminably in the middle acts as earlier priests and deacons are discussed and even revisited, men terminally changed by their battle with The Beast.

Church politics further muddy up the narrative, not adding anything to it, just slowing the movie to a crawl.

But if you’re going to see one Korean exorcism thriller this year, you can’t make it “Dark Nuns.” Not without catching “The Priests” first, and not without wading through a lot of distractions that keep us from focusing on our leads and their quest to save a teenager from a demon who has to be convinced to “say his name.”

Rating: unrated, Satanic violence

Cast: Kim Yoon-seok, Gang Don-won, Park So-dam and
Lee Ho-jae

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jang Jae-Hyun. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:47