Vietnam's Found-Footage Hit 'Lầu Chú Hoả' Heads to North American Theatres
A Vietnamese found-footage horror film that pulled more than a million admissions at home is crossing the Pacific. Lầu Chú Hoả: The Deadliest Mansion, directed by Hùng Trần, opens in North American theatres on 4 September through Mockingbird Pictures, with bookings across AMC, Regal and Cinemark circuits, Variety reports.
The film follows a group of livestreamers who break into an abandoned mansion tied to the legend of the "Hua family ghost," chasing views and finding more than they bargained for. It debuted in Vietnamese cinemas in June, became the country's first theatrical found-footage horror release, and topped the local box office, crossing VND 78 billion (about $3 million) in cumulative grosses — domestic, in this case, meaning Vietnam.
What makes the crossover notable is the production chain behind it. Lầu Chú Hoả was produced by Runup Vietnam alongside Hive Media Corp, a South Korean outfit whose credits include 12.12: The Day, Inside Men, The Man Standing Next, Harbin and Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. The partnership marked Hive's first production investment outside its home market. Hive knows the genre well: Gonjiam, its 2018 found-footage horror set in a real abandoned asylum, drew more than 2.6 million admissions in South Korea and became a benchmark for the format in Asia.
Mockingbird Pictures, the distributor handling the North American release, operates a large footprint in Vietnam — more than 60 new theatrical releases a year and upwards of 100 titles across post-theatrical platforms. Phong Duong, Mockingbird's business director and an executive producer at sister company Bluebells Studios, is shepherding the release alongside producer Lee Jin Sung.
There is a wrinkle on the date. Mockingbird Pictures US listed 7 August on its Facebook page, while the company's Instagram account promotes 4 September. The September date is the one Variety confirms, and it is the later, more recently published source.
Found-footage horror has a long track record of travelling cheaply and profitably: the format's low budgets and first-person immediacy tend to play across language barriers. A Vietnamese horror title landing on AMC and Regal screens is still rare enough to watch closely. Whether the Hua family ghost finds an audience in North America is a question the opening weekend will begin to answer.
