Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal

钟馗伏魔  雪妖魔灵

China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D, 117 mins.

Directors: Bao Dexi 鲍德熹 [Peter Pau], Zhao Tianyu 赵天宇.

Rating: 6/10.

Technically fine but emotionally bloodless costume fantasy.

STORY

Hu city, southern China, Tang dynasty. The time is approaching when, once every thousand years on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, all beings from the Three Realms (Heaven, Earth, Hell) can freely cross from one to another. The heavenly Emperor (Bao Dexi) decides that one city, Hu, is particularly at risk from the results of this chaos, and allows Master Zhang Daoxian (Zhao Wenxuan) to go to Earth to help the people of Hu prepare. Master Zhang sends his favourite pupil, scholar-turned-demon-slayer Zhong Kui (Chen Kun), to retrieve the powerful Dark Crystal 魔灵 from Hell, and houses it in the city’s Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, guarded by a kirin. Enraged at the theft of the powerful crystal, which records the demons’ bitter struggles, the Demon King sends Xueqing, aka Snow Girl (Li Bingbing), to retrieve it. Master Zhang assigns Zhong Kui to protect the crystal during the crucial period starting on 15 Jul, and gives him a magic fan which, when opened, will transform him into a giant demon, the fire-brreathing Black Monster. With seven days to go, Master Zhang puts Zhong Kui through intensive training, in order to control his super-powers for the good. Posing as the head of an entertainment troupe from Luolan in the west, Xueqing arrives in Hu with fellow demon Yi Wei (Jike Junyi) and a team of female dancers, also demons in human form. Zhong Kui recognises her as a Little Snow 雪儿, a spirit who bewitched and seduced him one winter three years earlier, when he was still a scholar. However, Xueqing says she’s never met him before. On the night Xueqing plans to steal the Dark Crystal, Zhong Kui doesn’t turn up to the troupe’s show; she later finds and seduces him but Zhong Kui temporarily paralyses her body and steals away to hide the crystal. In a battle involving Xueqing and Yi Wei vs Zhong Kui, the demons retrieve the box that contains the crystal; but when Xueqing shows the box to the Demon King, it’s empty. The following night, Zhong Kui presents the crystal to Master Zhang Daoxian, and the latter kills all the female demons. He then orders Zhong Kui to kill Xueqing, but Zhong Kui can’t bring himself to do it. As the Demon King launches a full-out attack on Hu, Zhong Kui transforms himself into the Black Monster but proves inadequate in the fighting. Changing back into Zhong Kui, he frees Xueqing and the two hide out with his younger sister Zhong Ling (Yang Zishan) and her boyfriend Du Ping (Bao Bei’er), a street quack. Zhong Kui and Xueqing journey to Hell, where they learn the truth of his past and the perilous future of the Three Realms.

REVIEW

Mythological Chinese ghostbuster Zhong Kui is defeated by the visual effects and an untidy script in Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal 钟馗伏魔  雪妖魔灵, a splashy 3-D blockbuster that tries to be both an action fantasy and a costume love story. Starring a miscast Chen Kun 陈坤 as the plug-ugly hero, and a better cast Li Bingbing 李冰冰 as a demoness who bewitches him, the movie gets by on a purely technical level, with impressive production design and generally excellent effects; but emotionally it doesn’t engage in the slightest, with by-the-numbers performances that just mark time until the next big action showpiece.

Co-directed by veteran Hong Kong d.p. Bao Dexi 鲍德熹 [Peter Pau] (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 卧虎藏龙, 2000; The Promise 无极, 2005) and young Mainland writer-director Zhao Tianyu 赵天宇, it’s a particularly soulless film – especially for one which deals in the subject of souls themselves as they cross the borders between the Three Realms of Heaven, Earth and Hell in a prolonged battle between good and evil. Set in southern China during the Tang dynasty, the story opens on the eve of a once-in-a-millennium event – the 15th day of the seventh lunar month when beings can temporarily cross between the realms. Sensing danger for one city, the Heavenly Emperor (Bao himself in a cameo) sends down Master Zhang to help the people prepare for an onslaught from Hell. Zhang gets his favourite pupil, scholar-turned-ghostbuster Zhong Kui, to steal Hell’s powerful Dark Crystal; in response, demoness Xueqing (aka Snow Girl), posing as an exotic dancer, is despatched from Hell to get it back. The problem is, she and Zhong Kui have a past history in which she seduced him one snowy night three years ago.

Maybe because of his unprepossessing looks, Zhong Kui hasn’t been a big-screen favourite, though he was a central character in the Hong Kong contemporary comedy The Chinese Ghostbuster 钟馗嫁妹 (1994, played by the late Wu Ma 午马) and in the Mainland drama Woman Demon Human 人•鬼•情 (1987, centred on a Beijing Opera actress who played him), as well as featuring in several TV dramas over the years. Equipped with demonstrably false facial hair, Chen portrays a toned-down version of the wild character, as well as appearing as a handsome, clean-shaven version in flashbacks. Hardly first choice for such a rugged, masculine role, Chen is actually more convincing in the flashbacks, which play on his matinee-idol looks; as a hairy ghostbuster he not only looks borderline ludicrous but also can express little under so much make-up.

It’s during the love flashbacks that Bao’s photography, the music by Spanish composer Javier Navarrete (whose fantasy scores include Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006, The Warrior’s Way 워리어스  웨이, 2010, and Wrath of the Titans, 2012) and the visual effects merge most seamlessly. As a d.p., Bao has plenty of experience at this type of romantic costume fantasy – especially on the Ronny Yu 于仁泰 classics The Bride with White Hair 白发魔女传 (1993) and The Phantom Lover 夜半歌声 (1995) – but, good as they are on a technical level, even these sequences in Zhongkui fail to hook the viewer emotionally, partly because there’s zero chemistry between actors Chen and Li. As he’s showed in his rare directing outings like The Touch 天脉传奇 (2002), Bao is more a highly organised technician than an actors’ director, and Zhao’s equally limited directing experience (foodie crime movie Deadly Delicious 双食记, 2008, love anthology The Law of Attraction 万有引力, 2011) doesn’t seem up to the demands of a big-budget production like this.

In her first film back in China in three years, Li largely drifts through the role of ice demon Xueqing, hardly seeming to engage with a character who’s given no real background or motivation. Though often encumbered by heavy makeup and visual effects, the actress also manages to look different from scene to scene in some of Bao’s heavily filtered photography, with little of her trademark looks coming through.

Neither she nor Chen are helped by a jerky screenplay (credited to six writers, including Zhao and novelist-scripter Shen Shiqi 沈诗棋) that hardly gives any time to character development, includes a mild twist at the 70-minute mark that will be no suprise to any local viewer, completely garbles a crucial flashback that will confuse non-Chinese audiences, and then sidelines Xueqing in favour of a new plot development between Zhong Kui and Master Zhang.

Subsidiary roles fare poorly: baby-faced actor Bao Bei’er 宝贝尔 gets one big scene near the start as a street quack but it’s never explained that his character is actually a hometown friend, while actress Yang Zishan 杨子珊 (so good in So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春, 2013, and Miss Granny 重返20岁, 2015, aka 20 Once Again) is wasted as Zhong Kui’s sister. Yi-minority singer Jike Junyi 吉克隽逸, a discovery on The Voice of China 中国好声音 talent show, is briefly exotic as a demoness pal of Xueqing, but it’s actually Taiwan actor Zhao Wenxuan 赵文瑄 [Winston Chao] who provides the most dramatic role in the whole film, as Master Zhang. Zhao still lacks the real screen heft that someone like Zhou Runfa 周润发 [Chow Yun-fat] could have brought to the role but, now in his mid-50s, he’s starting to develop some presence through sheer age.

For the record, the name Zhong Kui is written as one word in the film’s main title, though its should properly be spelt as two.

CREDITS

Presented by Desen International Media (Beijing) (CN), Desen International Media Group (CN). Produced by Desen International Media (Beijing) (CN), Desen International Media Group (CN).

Script: Zhao Tianyu, Qin Zhen, Shen Shiqi, Li Jie, Jin Lei, Zhang Huanhuan. Photography: Bao Dexi [Peter Pau]. Editing: He Daiwei [David Wu]. Music: Javier Navarrete. Theme song: Liu Huan. Vocals: Liu Huan, Jike Junyi. Production design: Mai Guoqiang [Kenneth Mak], Lin Weijian. Costume design: Chen Gufang, Ouyang Xia. Sound: He Zhitang, Zhu Yanfeng. Action: Yang Deyi. 3-D: Vincent E. Toto. Visual effects: Bao Dexi [Peter Pau], Kim Jong-pil, Bernard O. Ceguerra (Studio MG, Macrograph, Pixomondo). Choreography: Wu Weifeng. Creature design: Richard Taylor (Weta Workshop).

Cast: Chen Kun (Zhong Kui), Li Bingbing (Xueqing/Snow Girl), Zhao Wenxuan [Winston Chao] (Zhang Daoxian), Yang Zishan (Zhong Ling, Zhong Kui’s younger sister), Bao Bei’er (Du Ping), Jike Junyi (Yi Wei), Huang Huan (Nine-Tailed Fox), Luo Wenbo (White Fox), Hou Yidi (Red Fox), Maidina [Madina Memet] (Yellow Fox), Ren Zhiyi (Green Snake), Ma Xiangyi, Quniciren, Liu Anqi, Chen Yun (demon girls), Bao Dexi [Peter Pau] (Heavenly Emperor), Huang Wei (old shopowner), Lan Tian (grandson), Yaya (blind girl), Hu Dawei [David Wu] (imperial examiner), Wang Yiyan (falso scholar), Xiao Dingdong (boy in water), Huang Xiaolan (fat woman), Liu Zhanling (her husband), Yue Dongfeng (corporal), Zhang Junzhu (cute girl), Wang Gang (big guy), Zhou Xiaoqin (his wife).

Release: China, 19 Feb 2015.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 14 Mar 2015.)