The Midnight After

那夜凌晨，我坐上了旺角开往大埔的红VAN

Hong Kong, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 123 mins.

Director: Chen Guo 陈果 [Fruit Chan].

Rating: 7/10.

Hong Kong’s Chen Guo [Fruit Chan] bounces back after a decade with a wild-ride, apocalyptic comedy-horror.

STORY

Hong Kong, the present day. At 02:25 a group of passengers in Wangjiao [Mong Kok] Road, Kowloon, board a late-night minibus heading to Dabu [Tai Po], in the New Territories. An argumentative couple disembark at the last moment and, as the passengers set off, they see them dead in a roadside accident. Those on board the minibus, driven by Xue (Lin Xue), include You Zichi (Huang Younan); Yuki (Wen Yongshan); Huang Wanfa (Ren Dahua), a middle-aged gangster type; Temple Street fortune-teller Mu Xiuying (Hui Yinghong); married couple Bobby and Pat (Li Shangzheng, Zhuo Yunzhi), who are going to watch football on TV at a friends’ home; druggie Blind Hui (Li Canchen), who’s on the run from some dealers and thinks the bus is heading to Quanwan [Tsuen Wan], seven miles from Dabu; IT specialist Xin (Xu Tianyou); long-haired geek Ouyang Wei (Jan Curious); a nerdy young woman, LV (Mai Zhijun); and some students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The minibus goes through the Lion Rock Tunnel on its way to the New Territories, but as it reaches Dabu the passengers notice there are no other cars on the road. After dropping off the university students – one of whom suddenly starts to feel ill – the minibus reaches its destination in Guangfu Road at 03:12. The street is totally deserted and, though the passengers’ phones work, nobody answers their calls. Xue and Huang Wanfa remember the traffic suddenly disappeared in the middle of Lion Rock Tunnel. After exchanging their numbers, the passengers split up. You Zichi and Yuki, who were sitting next to each other, walk around but he still can’t reach his girlfriend Yi (Yan Zhuoling) by phone, nor Yuki her boyfriend (Yao Yueming). Meanwhile, at the university the students panic when their friend’s illness rapidly spreads. You Zichi grabs a bike and cycles to Yi’s home, which is empty and covered in dust. Then all the passengers’ phones start ringing, with just an electronic scream at the other end of the line. They all arrange to meet next day at a small restaurant in Dabu to solve the mystery of what has happened.

REVIEW

After a decade largely spent contributing to portmanteau movies and working as a producer, Hong Kong maverick Chen Guo 陈果 [Fruit Chan] finally rediscovers his creative mojo with The Midnight After 那夜凌晨，我坐上了旺角开往大埔的红VAN, his first Chinese-language feature since the deliciously nasty horror Dumplings 饺子 (2004). (Chen has made only one other feature in the meantime, the English-language horror Don’t Look Up, 2009, a US remake of the 1996 first feature by Japan’s Nakata Hideo 中田秀夫.) Midnight is an intensely local but exhilarating comedy-horror that shows Chen firing on all pistons with his indie energy of old. For international release it would benefit from trimming some of the over-long dialogue sequences by 10-15 minutes, but it’s still a wildly inventive ride that pushes the comedy-horror-fantasy genre in challenging directions, as well as being a touching adieu for present-day Hong Kong.

The source material is a web-novel, Lost on a Red Mini Bus to Taipo 那夜凌晨，我坐上了旺角开往大步的红VAN, by 25-year-old Hong Kong writer Pizza, that was first serialised online from Feb to Jul 2012 and then published in book form in Jul 2012. The basic principle is simple: a late-night minibus takes 16 passengers from downtown Kowloon to Dabu [Tai Po], a New Territories suburb, and on the way through the Lion Rock Tunnel appears to travel through a time-warp. What exactly that time-warp is, and what kind of Hong Kong they’ve ended up in, is actually of less interest than what happens to the passengers as they panic, argue, combine forces, turn on each other, and face up to a kind of apocalypse during the next 24 hours. In that respect, it’s not that much different from a desert-island comedy-horror; but by being set in everyday, familiar surroundings it also becomes a commentary on traditional Hong Kong denizens and their mindsets.

The minibus passengers are a cross-section of locals, young and old: the plump, chattery driver (veteran Lin Xue 林雪 [Lam Suet], as if to the role born), a gangstery type (Ren Dahua 任达华 [Simon Yam], sporting a bouffon haircut), a highly-strung fortune-teller (Hui Yinghong 惠英红, less out-there than usual), a cool techie (Xu Tianyou 徐天佑, the disturbed teenager in At the End of Daybreak 心魔, 2009), a handsome young guy (Huang Younan 黄又南, Xu’s partner in band Shine), a pretty young woman (actress-model Wen Yongshan 文咏珊 [Janice Man], Nightfall 大追捕, 2012), a druggie (Li Canchen 李璨琛 [Sam Lee]), a screwed-up geek (Jan Curious, vocalist in indie rock band Chochukmo 触执毛) and so on. Part of the enjoyment of the film lies in knowing who the actors are, but the dialogue and the way in which the script shuffles the characters’ alliances around are both lively enough to keep general viewers entertained. Thus, when Jan Curious suddenly launches into a David Bowie classic, it’s both germane to the movie and staged as a real-showstopper, whether you get the local joke or not.

Some of the dialogue, especially in the second half, starts to needlessly slow the film and could profitably be trimmed with no loss of detail – as in the movie’s most blackly comic section when the group turns on a member with grisly results. There’s a point, too, when the film needs to push on to the finale atop Da Mao Shan (Hong Kong’s highest peak) rather than get too involved in peripheral action. But in the end the movie has a point: the closing words, which are almost a requiem for the territory’s better days, wrap things up in a satisfying manner.

Overall, the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s the journey that counts: the group’s efforts to decode what is going on, the confrontational energy that is Hong Kongers’ greatest strength and weakness, and the continual sense of life lived on the edge of total collapse. Part of the solution to the mystery is guessable way before the passengers twig to it, but the film isn’t dependent on any one big twist. Midnight is primarily a character-driven movie, in which the occasional visual effects and the plot’s twists-and-turns are mere bonuses. Welcome back, Chen Guo.

The original Chinese title (of both novel and film) translates as “Early That Morning, I Took a Red Minibus from Wangjiao [Mong Kok] to Dabu [Tai Po]”.

CREDITS

Presented by Golden Scene (HK), Film Development Fund (HK), The Midnight After Film Production (HK), One Ninety Films (HK).

Script: Chen Huihong, Jiang Haoxin. Novel: Pizza. Photography: Lin Huaquan. Editing: Tian Shiba [Chen Guo], Du Du. Music: Lu Kaitong, Li Duanxian. Production design: Huang Minxuan. Costume design: Huang Jiayi. Sound: Chen Zhijian, Zhu Zhixia, Ye Junhao. Action: Huang Weiliang [Jack Wong]. Visual effects: Tang Jiawei (Different Digital Design)

Cast: Huang Younan (You Zichi), Wen Yongshan [Janice Man] (Yuki), Ren Dahua [Simon Yam] (Huang Wanfa), Hui Yinghong (Mu Xiuying), Xu Tianyou (Xin), Lin Xue [Lam Suet] (Xue, the minibus driver), Zhuo Yunzhi [Vincci Cheuk] (Pat), Li Shangzheng (Bobby), Li Canchen [Sam Lee] (Blind Hui), Yan Zhuoling (Yi, You Zichi’s girlfriend), Jan Curious (Ouyang Wei), Mai Zhijun (LV), Yao Yueming (Yuki’s boyfriend), Chen Jianlang (Glu-Stick), Yuan Haoyang (Aeroplane Yu), Shi Weiting (Zixiong, student), Zhang Chi (Peter, student), Zhou Peilin (Qing, student), Ruan Hanxiang (Dawg, student), Chen Kai’en (heroin pusher), Situ Dexian (minibus driver), Zhou Guoxian (masked person), Li Fanxi (North Korean).

Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Special), 7 Feb 2014.

Release: Hong Kong, 10 Apr 2014.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 8 Feb 2014.)