The Secret of Immortal Code
伊阿索密码
China, 2018, b&w/colour, 2.35:1, 87 mins.
Directors: Li Wei 李伟, Zhang Nan 张楠.
Rating: 5/10.
Futuristic b&w horror-thriller has laudable ambitions but is let down by a blah script and average direction.
STORY
A large metropolis, somewhere in China, mid-22nd century AD. There are public protests against giant Rafael Pharmaceutical Industries whose head, Yao Xianyuan (Zhao Lixin), still hasn’t come up with a promised cure for cancer despite a 20-year programme of cryopreservation of volunteer patients for research. One of his senior doctors, Lin Ziqi (Liang Jing), has been forced to perform black-market surgeries to pay for the cryopreservation costs for her elder sister Lin Yuqi (Li Landi), who was frozen 20 years ago under the programme. Their mother (Li Yu), a professor who also worked for Rafael, died 18 years ago in a chemical accident, for which Lin Ziqi has always blamed Yao Xianyuan. When Lin Ziqi hears that her sister has been accidentally defrozen – an irreversible process that leads to death in five days – she confronts Yao Xianyuan. He claims that his cancer cure, known as Rafael-1, is actually ready but needs more tests before it is made public. He proposes that he and Lin Ziqi set off for the company’s Arctic base, with Lin Yuqi’s body, to effect a cure. Due to bad weather conditions that make flying impossible, they go by ship, the MV Donghui; the voyage should take five days. One day into the voyage, Lin Yuqi wakes from her coma but doesn’t recognise her sister. After the ship loses contact with the Arctic base, it intercepts a cryo-capsule that has floated down from the base in which is the body of a volunteer cancer patient, Han Song (Yang Yi), delivered to the base in 2143. Lin Ziqi secretly breaks into the lab, initiates his revival and tests his blood; she finds that Rafael-1 has, indeed, been a success, producing cancer-eating cells. Meanwhile, an engineer, Bucktooth Zhang (He Kuan), who has cancer and spied on Lin Ziqi in the lab, secretly injects himself with Han Song’s blood and is miraculously cured. On the fourth day, the ship is struck by lightning and a resulting power failure delays its arrival, threatening the life of Lin Yuqi, who has already started haemorrhaging. Learning of Bucktooth Zhang’s sudden cure, Lin Ziqi decides to do the same for her sister. However, Han Song has revived and gone missing. A manhunt for him ensues on the ship. But Yao Xinyuan hasn’t told anyone that the cancer-killing Mogra virus has monstrous side-effects.
REVIEW
Getting the jump on a mini-wave of Mainland sci-fi movies expected in the coming 18 months, futuristic horror-thriller The Secret of Immortal Code 伊阿索密码 unfortunately fails to reap any advantage. Modestly budgeted, and seemingly aimed at an artier audience with its b&w photography and minimalist look, it was reportedly inspired by US movies like Cloverfield and The Thing but ends up more like Alien on a ship. The film’s biggest flaw – a feeble, paper-thin screenplay that’s credited to no less than five people, led by romantic novelist and Beijing Film Academy graduate Yu Si 余思, 32 – is all the more frustrating as there’s clearly considerable intelligence behind the film, as well as a good lineup of talent in front of and behind the camera. Produced by Beijing’s Combo Drive Pictures, which previously teamed with China Film on the excellent Brotherhood of Blades 绣春刀 (2014), Code crashed on release, with a miniscule RMB1.3 million.
Reportedly in the works for seven years, the film finally shot during Dec 2015-Jan 2016, at China Film’s Huairou Film Base north of Beijing. The all-studio, noir-ish look creates its own aesthetic that fits the 22nd-century dystopian setting, and the decision to present the film in b&w conveniently lowers the bar for the visual effects. Despite that, and especially when the story settles down on a big ship after a 15-minute opening, there’s no disguising the paucity of the production design (lots of running up and down the same corridors) and some very B-grade model work on the ocean.
All that wouldn’t matter in the least if the script had some engaging dialogue and sense of dramatic construction. Instead, the plot – involving a voyage to the Arctic to effect a cancer cure that also has monstrous side-effects – leaps from one pulp-science idea to another while asking the viewer to invest emotionally in the dilemma of a lonely scientist trying to save her cryogenically frozen sister. At every step – from the futuristic urban opening, through the monster on board the ship, to the finale with an escape pod and auto-destruct countdown – Code recalls bigger, better movies rather than establishing a personality of its own.
In a rare lead part, actress Liang Jing 梁静, 46, has the screen stature for a semi-action role, as well as the character smarts (Design of Death 杀生, 2012; The Chef The Actor The Scoundrel 厨子戏子痞子, 2013), but apart from a couple of dramatic confrontations with male lead Zhao Lixin 赵立新 she seems consistently constrained by the thin script and workaday direction, neither of which can decide how strong her character is really meant to be. Zhao, 49, a reliable actor who played the political commissar in Youth 芳华 (2017), looks faintly ridiculous in villainous goatee and specs, and isn’t called upon to do much more than gaze blankly into the middle distance. Other roles are pulpy: the crazed engineer of He Kuan 贺宽, the icy aide of Wang Jiajia 王佳佳, the winsome dying sister of Li Landi 李兰迪.
Photography by co-director Li Wei 李伟 is okay, making the most of the minimal sets, and tight editing by Tu Yiran 屠亦然 (Some Like It Hot 情圣, 2016; Hello Mr. Billionaire 西虹市首富, 2018) pares the whole thing down to less than 90 minutes. Action staging by Gao Ruigang 高瑞刚 (Brotherhood of Blades) is surprisingly unexciting, and music by Thailand’s Pantawit Kiangsiri (Blood 13 血十三, 2018) is rote, sometimes a little too reminiscent of the late Bernard Herrmann.
The film’s Chinese title means “The Iaso Code”, referring to the goddess of healing in Greek mythology, as well as the pet lizard of Liang’s character (don’t ask).
CREDITS
Presented by China Film (CN), Beijing Thriving Pictures (CN). Produced by Combo Drive Pictures (CN).
Script: Yu Si, Yuan Zhe, Li Shifu, Fang Yijia, Wang Hongfan. Photography: Li Wei. Editing: Tu Yiran. Music: Pantawit Kiangsiri. Art direction: Di Kun, Jia Xue. Costume design: Di Kun. Sound: Bai Ruizhou, Long Xiaozhu, Zhu Yanfeng. Action: Gao Ruigang. Special effects: Li Bin. Visual effects: Li Quansheng. Executive direction: Song Yang.
Cast: Liang Jing (Lin Ziqi), Zhao Lixin (Yao Xianyuan), Wang Jiajia (Xin Hong), Zhou Mingshan (ship’s captain), Hu Xiaoguang (Chen, ship’s first mate), Yang Yi (Han Song), Li Landi (Lin Yuqi), Dong Daqing (Da Pao, ship’s engineer), He Kuan (Bucktooth Zhang), Li Shengjia (Xiaozhao, ship’s petty officer), Li Yu (Yang, professor), Zhou Yun (presenter), Qu Zheming (Han Lei), Li Yazhen (young Lin Ziqi).
Release: China, 22 Jun 2018.