Demons
Demons
Singapore, 2018, colour/b&w, 1.33:1, 84 mins.
Director: Xu Ruifeng 许瑞峰 [Daniel Hui].
Rating: 2/10.
Amateurish attempt at an offbeat psychodrama between a theatre director and his lead actress.
STORY
Singapore, the present day. Vicki Yang (Yang Yanxuan), an emotionally fragile, wannabe actress, auditions with well-known theatre director Daniel Goh (Wei Mingyao) for a part in his new production. Daniel Goh has a reputation for being tough with his actors but Vicki Yang says she hopes the experience will make her body and thoughts reconnect. When the lead actress (Eshley Gao) storms out, Vicki Yang is given a chance at playing the role and she experiences Daniel Goh’s games full on: one evening he arrives for dinner at the flat she shares with her brother Viknesh (Viknesh Kobinathan) and he gives her a present of a dead fish to wear as a hat. Her brother seems to encourage such games. A voice inside her accuses her of liking Daniel Goh’s games; she says she just wants the job and is prepared to put up with his bullying. She then starts seeing her double, dressed in black. Some time after the successful opening of the play, Vicki Yang disappears. Daniel Goh hears that some official funding has been withdrawn from his theatre company, for bureaucratic reasons he cannot understand. His behaviour starts to become erratic, to the concern of his live-in lover John (Xu Ruifeng). Then the decomposed body of a young woman is found in the Malaysian jungle, seemingly the victim of cannibalism, and the police question Daniel Goh over his last trip to Kuala Lumpur.
REVIEW
A schizophrenic, wannabe actress applies for a job with a famously bullying theatre director in Demons, an atempt at an offbeat psychodrama that’s toe-curlingly amateurish. The third feature-length film by Singapore-born Xu Ruifeng 许瑞峰 [Daniel Hui] – following two hybrid documentaries, Eclipses (2011) and Snakeskin (2014) – it partly continues the theme of psychological “doubles” referenced in Eclipses but fails to make a case for itself, especially at script and performance levels. Shot, like Xu’s previous two productions, on 16mm film and in Academy ratio, Demons‘ most notable feature is its sound effects, replete with ghoulish rumbles, scrapings and tremors that really do conjure up the gates of hell opening. More’s the pity the rest of the film fails to live up to its creepiness.
One of Demons‘ most basic faults, at a dramatic level, is that a film centred on a bullying director hardly shows him to be the monster he’s supposed to be. In one dinner scene (which is probably in the actress’ imagination, anyway) he’s shown to have a seriously weird sense of humour; otherwise, with hardly any rehearsals shown, his behaviour has to be taken on trust – and mostly from the actress herself, who from the first scene is portrayed as far nuttier than anyone else. When she disappears from the film halfway through, and the director’s own growing madness becomes the film’s focus, it’s difficult to know where the viewer’s sympathies should lie, and whether he really deserves such retribution.
That apart, Xu’s script dodges here and there, introducing pointless distractions to what should be the main plot. For example, the actress (who’s 100% Chinese) lives with her brother (who’s 100% Indian – eh?); and in the second half it’s revealed that the director is actually gay and living with a boyfriend (played by Xu himself), which develops into a mini-mini-soap all its own. The finale is like a camp slice of Jacobean drama, with the director pleading, “Did I deserve this?” Good question.
It’s the performance by well-known Singaporean theatre/film director Wei Mingyao 魏铭耀 [Glen Goei] (Forever Fever, 1998; The Blue Mansion, 2009) as the director that makes Demons almost watchable, but even he can’t give conviction to several poorly directed (and written) mad scenes in the second half. As the actress, writer/film-worker Yang Yanxuan 杨彦绚 is, alas, no actress; and the rest of the cast similarly scrape by. The 16mm photography by Lei Yuanbin 雷远彬 [Looi Wan Ping] is okay but naturally has a slightly washed-out, fuzzy look on a big screen. (It’s good, however, to see images without lifeless digital sourcing for a change.) Though sound effects are notable, the dialogue (99% in English/Singlish) is sometimes indistinct.
CREDITS
Presented by 13 Little Pictures (SG), Ultraviolet Films (SG).
Script: Xu Ruifeng [Daniel Hui]. Photography: Lei Yuanbin [Looi Wan Ping]. Editing: Xu Ruifeng [Daniel Hui]. Music: Wuttipong Leetrakul, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr. Art direction: uncredited. Costumes: Dinu Bodiciu. Sound: Alex Herboche, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr.
Cast: Yang Yanxuan (Vicki Yang), Wei Mingyao [Glen Goei] (Daniel Goh), Viknesh Kobinathan (Viknesh), Eshley Gao (Ashley), Chen Meitian [Tan Bee Thiam] (assistant director), Xu Ruifeng [Daniel Hui] (John, Daniel Goh’s boyfriend), Violet Goh (strange woman).
Premiere: Busan Film Festival (A Window on Asian Cinema), 6 Oct 2018.
Release: Singapore, tba.