Scare Out
惊蛰无声
China, 2026, colour, 2.35:1, 103 mins.
Director: Zhang Yimou 张艺谋.
Rating: 5/10.
Visually flashy, hi-tech dystopian spy yarn has some strong performances but an unfocused screenplay that doesn’t engage emotionally.
STORY
A city somewhere in southern China, the present day. State Security agents, directed by deputy team leaders Huang Kai (Zhu Yilong) and Yan Di (Yi Yangqianxi), are tracking the movements through the city of a foreign agent, Nathan (Nathaniel Boyd), who is carrying a metal box containing highly classified material. Before he makes contact with anyone to hand the box over, Nathan is arrested when the box bursts into flames, severely injuring him. During the chase, Huang Kai is wounded by an archer-sniper, Pinshan (Jiang Qilin), and one of the team, Xiaolizi (Lv Mingzhao), is killed. The First Day 第一天. The next day, the team is introduced to its new leader, Zhao Hong (Song Jia), by the bureau’s deputy head, Wang (Zhang Yi). She knows both Huang Kai and Yan Di; after sending the team home to rest, she tells both men confidentially that it has become known that a mole for a foreign intelligence agency is currently being recruited within State Security at a high level, maybe within their team. An investigation is being carried out, codenamed Scare Out 惊蛰; as part of it, Huang Kai and Yan Di are to be questioned, and their drone operator, Chen Yi (Lin Boyang), is also to be investigated over her killing of Pinshan, which effectively cut off any trail to the people behind last night’s operation. That night, disguised against security cameras, Huang Kai visits the flat of Bai Fan (Yang Mi), 34, a foreign national who works for a foreign intelligence agency. She has been blackmailing the married Huang Kai with a video of a drunken night’s sex together, and now wants him to wipe some prints off the metal box with some special powder; after that, she’ll leave him alone. Immediately after he leaves, Bai Fan is visited by Li Nan (Lei Jiayin), 43, the scientist who leaked the material in the metal box and whose prints are on it. He is in a panic and wants to leave the country as soon as possible. The Second Day 第二天. Huang Kai and Yan Di are secretly observed in their office by Zhao Hong and Wang as they are told to take the metal box downstairs and watch it being transported to a laboratory for testing. The box is actually a fake – the real one was sent to Beijing overnight. Both Huang Kai and Yan Di realise it, and therefore that they are the main suspects for being the mole. Heavily disguised again, Huang Kai visits Bai Fan and tries to convince her to hand herself in; she says he’s finished anyway, as he’s been in contact with a foreign agent. She also tells him that his wife, Xiaoyu (Liu Shishi), who’s recently suspected he’s having an affaire, is pregnant. Meanwhile, Yan Di has been following Huang Kai, and searches Bai Fan’s flat when she goes out briefly. Yan Di is also secretly being followed by Zhao Hong. The Third Day 第三天. Yan Di reports his findings to Zhao Hong (who already knows) and that there was nothing in Bai Fan’s flat to incriminate Huang Kai. Bai Fan calls Huang Kai to tell him that Yan Di arrived in her flat as predicted but she had already made sure that there was nothing to find, beyond her being just a tourist. Like Yan Di, Zhao Hong doesn’t want Huang Kai to be guilty, as she respects him and even introduced his wife to him. Bai Fan tells Huang Kai to kill Li Nan, as the latter may be able to identify him from seeing him on the stairs teo nights ago. However, Yan Di follows him and manages to stop him killing Li Nan. The Fourth Day 第四天. Wang tells Zhao Hong that he’s just been informed that Bai Fan was good friends with Yan Di’s late ex-girlfriend, Li Feifei (Wang Tianxin), so he can’t be ruled out of the investigatiion. The lab results have revealed that the metal box contained the stealth coating used on China’s latest fighter jets. Li Nan has been identified as the chief suspect, so a massive manhunt, led by Zhao Hong and including Huang Kai and Yan Di, is undertaken as Li Nan tries to leave the city with Bai Fan’s apparent help.
REVIEW
Reportedly the first Mainland espionage film to be made with the co-operation of the Ministry of State Security, Scare Out 惊蛰无声 is also the first modern spy movie by director Zhang Yimou 张艺谋, now 76. Zhang, who’s directed every genre apart from a musical and an out-and-out comedy, previously made the period spy adventure Cliff Walkers 悬崖之上 (2021) but this is the first time he’s dipped his toe into the waters of present-day spookdom. The results are very mixed: strongly cast with several of his regulars (Lei Jiayin 雷佳音, Zhang Yi 张译), it’s a densely plotted but barely believable yarn about a mole within the security service that never grips at an emotional level and is distractingly mounted on visual steroids. Largely set at night in a dystopian cityscape that’s all neon, glass and steel, it’s sometimes intriguing but rarely as gripping as it thinks it is.
It came third place in the Chinese New Year film stakes with a strong but not kapow RMB1.36 billion, just behind costume martial-arts extravaganza Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert 镖人 风起大漠 (RMB1.45 billion) but some RMB3 billion behind Pegasus 3 飞驰人生3, the CNY box-office champ and, so far, 2026’s. It was also considerably behind Zhang’s two previous CNY movies, comedy-drama Article 20 第二十条 (2024; RMB2.45 billion) and his No. 1 costume whodunit Full River Red 满江红 (2023; RMB4.54 billion).
Though he often manages to conceal it with classy visuals and casting, the Achilles’ Heel in Zhang’s movies has often been their scripts – and so it is with Scare Out. Written by Chen Liang 陈亮, 46 – a film academic who teaches performance at Beijing Film Academy, has directed variety shows for TV, and is best known for his screenplay for the online movie My Brothers 我的好兄弟 (2018), based on the real-life career of singer Gao Jin 高进 – the screenplay is thick with intrigue but lacks a real centre that an audience can become engaged with. The opening is gripping enough, a 10-minute, noirish chase sequence in which a State Security team, using all kinds of hi-tech spy gear, tracks a westerner across a modern, unnamed city as he carries a metal box with a state secret inside. The pursuit ends violently, with one agent killed, one of the deputy team leaders, Huang Kai (played by Zhu Yilong 朱一龙), wounded, and the other deputy team leader, Yan Di (Yi Yangqianxi 易烊千玺), concerned for his close friend.
The narrative then breaks down into four days, and the plot’s main focus immediately seems to shift with the announcement that the team is getting a new leader – veteran Zhao Hong (seasoned actress Song Jia 宋佳) – who immediately sends most of the team home to rest before telling Huang Kai and Yan Di that they’re both under suspicion for being a potential mole for a western power (unnamed but clearly the US). The top-secret investigation, ordered by State Security high-up Wang (regular Zhang Yi, at his hangdog best), is codenamed Scare Out 惊蛰, as in the Chinese name for the third of the 24 solar terms, a period in early March when “insects awake from hibernation”. (The movie’s Chinese title roughly translates as “Silent Awakening”.)
Just when the film looks like being a whodunit between two pals in the secret service, it immediately shifts focus again, as Huang Kai is revealed as being blackmailed by a sexy foreign national, Bai Fan. As Huang Kai’s unhappy wife (TV actress Liu Shishi 刘诗诗, in a very token role) is then introduced, the focus shifts briefly to his strained marriage and personal conflicts, before a new character – the scientist who leaked the state secret in the metal box – is introduced, with his own personal problems and pleas to Bai Fan to get him out of the country. If that’s not enough already, Yan Di then starts to assume a bigger role in the plot, spying on his own pal. Meanwhile, Zhao Hong, who’s always liked Huang Kai and even introduced his future wife to him, has mixed feelings about him being the guilty party. And all that’s just the first half of the picture.
The good news is that, after the way over-long Full River Red and Article 20, Zhang and his regular editor Li Yongyi 李永一 have returned to a more reasonable running time of around 100 minutes – about as long as such visually and structurally intense material as Scare Out is bearable. Apart from the dystopian futurescapes of blue and white neon, surveillance screens and computer geegaws, the editing is perpetually restless (with Zhang using multi-cam shooting, reportedly 8-10 at a time), the costuming deliberately downplayed (with all service members wearing black throughout), and repeated overhead shots of traffic weaving through huge, spaghetti-like intersections. The irony, however, is that the espionage world that Zhang and Chen present doesn’t seem very realistic: the omnipresent hi-tech is overcooked (even for a surveillance society like China’s) and details like Yan Di using passing taxis to secretly follow his pal through the city at night seems almost quaint. One wonders exactly what the Ministry of State Security actually advised on.
The other central weakenss is that, though they both do their best, Yi and Zhu don’t really make their roles especially engaging, and are often outclassed by the more colourful supports. In Full River Red actor-boybander Yi, 25, managed to hold his own against the older and more experienced Shen Teng 沈腾; but paired here with the older Zhu, 38, a likeable but rarely dominant screen presence (Dongji Rescue 东极岛, 2025), Yi just seems one-note intense and there’s no special chemistry between the two men to give the movie a strong centre. Instead, the side roles are (distractingly) more memorable: the always reliable Song, 45, as the colleague who’s ordered to spy on her friends, making the most of a somewhat under-written part; Zhang regular Lei, 42 – the prime minister in Full River Red, geeky techie in Under the Light 坚如磐石 (2023) – as the panicky, traitorous scientist; and most of all, Yang Mi 杨幂, 39, as the luscious and ruthless foreign spy, certainly the strongest role of her recently resurgent career (Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a HotPot 没有一顿火锅解决不了的事, 2023; She’s Got No Name 酱园弄•悬案, 2025; The Lychee Road 长安的荔枝, 2025).
Technically the film is top-notch, with only the score by Peng Fei 彭飞 not registering a personality of its own behind all the flashy visuals and editing. The use of several songs on the soundtrack also seems utterly inappropriate for such material. The film was shot from mid-Apr 2025 in Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong. Zhang’s film-maker daughter, Zhang Mo 张末 (Suddenly Seventeen 28岁未成年, 2016; Snipers 狙击手, 2022, co-dir.; Last Suspect 拯救嫌疑人, 2023), handled the extensive second-unit work. As often in films she’s involved with, her husband, IMAX China CEO Daniel (Wade) Manwaring, plays a small role, here a high-up foreign handler.
CREDITS
Presented by Damai Entertainment (Beijing) (CN), Shanghai Zhongzhong Pictures (CN), Beijing Lifeng Culture Development (CN), China Film Group (CN).
Script: Chen Liang, Zhang Yimou. Photography: Zhao Xiaoding. Editing: Li Yongyi. Music: Peng Fei. Art direction: Lin Mu. Styling: Chen Minzheng, Qin Xilin. Sound: Yang Jiang, Zhao Nan. Action: Fu Xiaojie. Visual effects: Jiang Chao, Huang Canzhou, Lin Songqing. Second-unit direction: Zhang Mo.
Cast: Yi Yangqianxi (Yan Di), Zhu Yilong (Huang Kai), Song Jia (Zhao Hong), Lei Jiayin (Li Nan), Yang Mi (Bai Fan), Zhang Yi (Wang, State Security bureau deputy head), Liu Shishi (Xiaoyu, Huang Kai’s wife), Liu Yaowen (Jianhao, agent), Lin Boyang (Chen Yi, agent, drone operator), Daniel Manwaring (foreign agent), Pan Binlong (delivery biker), Duan Yihong (Chen, hospital doctor), Chen Minghao (Liu, State Security department head), Yao Anna (emergency-room doctor), Nathaniel Boyd (Nathan), Jiang Qilin (Pinshan), Wang Shengdi (Li Ziyan, Li Nan’s daughter), Pierre Bourdaud (killer hired by Bai Fan), Huang Yan (Huzi, agent), Fei Fan (Lin Lu, agent), Du Yusen (Sun Bin), Dai Wenbo (Sanyang, agent), Yi Anxi (An’an, agent), Lv Mingzhao (Xiaolizi, agent), Jiang Pengyu (recorder), Zhang Yi’nan (security guard), Zhou Quan (receptionist), Wang Tianxin (Li Feifei, Yan Di’s ex-girlfriend), Fu Lulu (Zhou Xiaohui, Li Nan’s wife).
Release: China, 17 Feb 2026.