One of the scariest things to come out of Vietnam in years started on Steam, and now it's headed for the big screen. The Scourge (Vietnamese title Tai Ương), the first-person puzzle-horror game that crawled out of 1990s Saigon and racked up an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating, is getting a feature film adaptation slated for 2027. For a country whose horror scene has been climbing fast, this one's a landmark: the first Vietnamese feature built from an original homegrown game IP.
The Game That Earned It
Co-developed by Vietnamese studio Rare Reversee, which also publishes, alongside Beaztek Studio, The Scourge dropped a free demo back in September 2023 before hitting Steam Early Access in October 2024. The full game launched March 28, 2026 on Steam, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store. It topped China's Steam Early Access chart, pulled in tens of thousands of downloads, and sits at a 94% positive rating on the platform, with a player base spread across 40-plus countries. You play Nhật Huy, a young man dragged into something wrong at the Phong Xích Lan apartment building while digging into the mysterious deaths of his entire family. Pure dread, no hand-holding.
Who's Making the Movie
The film comes from Chanh Phuong Films, producers Charlie Nguyen and Jimmy Pham Nghiem steering the ship. Doan Si Nguyen directs from a script by Tran Khanh Hoang. Vietnam's Skyline Media is handling international sales and walked the project into the Cannes Film Market in May 2026, and the production also locked a financing partnership with Triple Green CineCapital, marking TGC's first Vietnamese investment. That's real backing behind a horror title, not a wishlist.
What the Film Is About
Rather than just port the game's puzzles to screen, the adaptation keeps the bones, that haunted apartment block inspired by a real abandoned building in Ho Chi Minh City, and builds outward. The story follows an estranged young man who comes home to find his mother possessed. He and his sister have to unravel a malevolent force tangled up in forbidden rituals, buried family secrets, and the spirit world. The script leans into Vietnamese urban legends, ghost stories, and old customs, drawing on the real legend of a cursed Saigon apartment block from the 1990s.
Why It Matters
Game-to-film adaptations live or die on whether the people making them actually respect the source. Here the dread is already proven, the setting is genuinely specific, and the creative team is treating the game as a foundation to expand, not a logo to slap on a poster. If you've been watching Vietnamese horror sharpen up, The Scourge is one to keep on the radar heading into 2027.