The Soul

缉魂

China/Taiwan/Hong Kong, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 123 mins. (China)/129 mins. (Taiwan).

Director: Cheng Weihao 程伟豪.

Rating: 4/10.

Futuristic whodunit is undercut by an oppressively gloomy atmosphere and tortuous, unbelievable plotting.

STORY

A Chinese-speaking country in East Asia, 26 Feb 2033. In the early hours the police are called to the mansion of businessman Wang Shicong (Gu Bin), head of Wang Group, and are let in by the maid (Lv Xuefeng). Wang Shicong, who was already dying from brain cancer, has been bludgeoned to death with a vajra; nearby is the semiconscious body of his second wife, Li Yan (Sun Anke), whom he married a year ago. Prosecutor Liang Wenchao (Zhang Zhen), 38, who has just learned he has incurable cancer of the lower spine, asks his boss (Wang Daonan) to be put in charge of the high-profile case, which is being investigated by Liang Wenchao’s police detective wife, Bao (Zhang Junning), who has also just learned she’s seven weeks pregnant. Interviewed by Bao, Li Yan says she couldn’t sleep that night and found a “spell” symbol carved on the door of her husband’s bedroom. Inside, his estranged 18-year-old son, Wang Tianyou (Lin Huimin), was performing a weird ritual over him. As Wang Shicong rang for the police, Wang Tianyou killed him. The maid tells Bao that she was woken by a sound and saw Wang Tianyou fleeing the premises. Two weeks earlier, on Chinese New Year’s Eve, Wang Tianyou had suddenly turned up at the house and accused his father of murdering Tang Suzhen (Zhang Baijia), his mother and Wang Shicong’s first wife. Wang Tianyou’s torso was covered in shamanistic tattoos – a form of witchcraft he and Tang Suzhen had believed in, and which he was using to bring her soul back to take revenge on Wang Shicong. Examined by the police, the will of Wang Shicong shows that Wang Tianyou gets nothing; his property and company all go to Li Yan, with the second beneficiary being Wang Shicong’s longtime, loyal CEO Wan Yufan (Li Mingshun), 52. The latter had originally introduced Li Yan to Wang Shicong, who had been sexually estranged from his first wife ever since the birth of Wang Tianyou; though he was already quite ill, Wang Shicong married Li Yan, as she was from an orphanage his company sponsored. A forensics report on the vajra suggests the killer was left-handed, which Li Yan is; the implement also has her fingerprint on it. Tang Suzhen had committed suicide by jumping from the house’s terrace a year ago, after threatening to “expose” Wang Shicong, whom she hated; she was already half-crazed and into weird beliefs and hallucinogens. At the official inquiry, chaired by prosecutor Liang Wechao, Li Yan says that, since she first arrived at the house in late 2031, she felt it was haunted by the ghost of Tang Suzhen. The police then discover that Wan Yufan had an affaire back in 2008 with Tang Suzhen, then a fellow scientist at the Wang Group. They also find that Li Yan was originally right-handed when she first moved into the Wang mansion, and that the Wang Group is in financial trouble. It turns out that Wang Shicong remarried in order to bear an heir who could eventually inherit the company. Liang Wenchao accuses Wan Yufan of conspiring with Li Yan to murder Wang Shicong, but he has no evidence to prove it. The police finally locate Wang Tianyou in the countryside and he confesses to the murder of his father. But Liang Wenchao, who is getting weaker by the day as the cancer spreads to his brain, believes the case is not so simple. It then turns out that his life could be saved by RNA technology developed by the Wang Group.

REVIEW

A dystopian, futuristic whodunit that gets progressively less believable from the halfway point, The Soul 缉魂 is a disappointment coming from Taiwan film-maker Cheng Weihao 程伟豪, 36, after his complex and absorbing whydunit Who Killed Cock Robin 目击者 (2017). That long-in-the-works feature had a carefully crafted script that was a match for the classy, atmospheric packaging that Cheng has shown in all his films, even the two horrors (The Tag-Along 红衣小女孩, 2015; The Tag-Along 2 红衣小女孩2, 2017) that he made either side of Cock Robin. But in The Soul, his fourth feature, the screenplay just isn’t strong enough to combat the gloomy, oppressive design that pervades the movie, and the performances are more and more undercut by the tortuous, borderline ludicrous plotting. The first feature by Cheng to be theatrically released in the Mainland, it took a barely polite RMB111 million during Chinese New Year, before opening a fortnight later in Taiwan where it took a so-so NT$160 million.

Adapted from the novella 移魂有术 (literally, “Soul Transfer”) by Mainland sci-fi writer Jiang Bo 江波, 43, published in a 2014 collection of his stories (see cover, left), the film is a curious mixture of elements. The opening is a classic murder mystery, with the police called out one night to the mansion of a dying businessman, only to find him bludgeoned to death by a vajra and his young, second wife semi-conscious nearby. The maid says she saw the man’s estranged son running away, and he seems the obvious suspect. Thereon, the plot gets ever thicker as superstitious rituals (cf. The Tag-Along 2), madness, medical research, hauntings and pure human greed are stirred into the mixture. Meanwhile, the hero of the tale, a police prosecutor, is gradually dying from cancer and his wife, head of the investigating team, has just found she’s pregnant.

It’s a challenging brew that’s difficult to swallow because (a) it’s relentlessly downbeat, with no one the audience can really get involved with, and (b) the plotting becomes ever more convoluted and outrageous. Only gradually does one realise, from all the snazzy police technology, that the story is set a decade or so in the future – in a territory that’s probably Taiwan (using traditional Chinese characters) but is never specifically identified as such. Switching from the d.p. of his previous two films, Chen Qiwen 陈麒文, Cheng has used India-based cameraman Kartik Vijay (Anwar, 2007; Manto, 2018), who recently shot the Malaysian period drama, The Garden of Evening Mists (2019), by Taiwan director Lin Shuyu 林书宇 [Tom Lin]. Vijay’s almost monochrome widescreen images are immaculate, but they give a bleak, cold feel to the whole film – heightened by the production design of Taiwan’s Huang Meiqing 黄美清 – that’s a further barrier to becoming involved. The score by another new hire, Taiwan composer Lu Lvming 卢律铭 (Xiao Mei 小美, 2018; Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020), is also of little help, becoming progressively more conventional and heart-tugging, in a corny way, towards the end. At some two hours, the film is too long by at least 20 minutes.

Here bald and scrawny and hardly photogenic, Taiwan actor Zhang Zhen 张震, 44, looks convincingly like a dying man but, rarely the most involving of actors anyway, hardly makes enough impression to carry a film of this weight. As his cop wife, German-born, Taiwan-raised actress Zhang Junning 张钧甯, 38, has her moments but the bond between the couple is never really developed until it’s dramatically too late, and Zhang never gets to show off the talent she demonstrated in, say, Dinner for Six 六人晚餐 (2016). Mainland actress Sun Anke 孙安可, 23, from TV, makes a reasonable job of the complex part of the victim’s young second wife but is let down by the writers. As the dead man’s loyal CEO, Malaysian actor Li Mingshun 李铭顺 [Christopher Lee], 49, who was so good in Cock Robin, comes through more strongly as the film progresses, though largely due to his own technique.

The version released in the Mainland was six minutes shorter, the censored scenes largely consisting of graphic violence.

CREDITS

Presented by Haining Temjin Media (CN), Horgos QC Media (CN), Pon Pon Pictures (HK), Rise Pictures (TW). Produced by Haining Temjin Media (CN), Rise Pictures (TW).

Script: Cheng Weihao, Jin Bailun, Chen Yanqi. Novella: Jiang Bo. Photography: Kartik Vijay. Editing: Xie Mengru. Music: Lu Lvming. Production design: Huang Meiqing. Art direction: Liang Shuolin. Styling: Ye Zhuzhen. Sound: Jian Fengshu. Action: Hong Shihao. Visual effects: Guo Xiancong, Liu Weiyi.

Cast: Zhang Zhen (Liang Wenchao), Zhang Junning (Liu Zijun/Bao), Sun Anke (Li Yan), Li Mingshun [Christopher Lee] (Wan Yufan), Zhang Baijia (Tang Suzhen), Lin Huimin (Wang Tianyou), Gu Bin (Wang Shicong), Lv Xuefeng (Zhang, Wangs’ maid), Zhang Zhehao (Liang, police detective), Lin Hexuan (Lai Chengguang, journalist witness), Wu Zhiqing (reporter), Xue Liangzhi (obstetrics doctor), Wang Daonan (Liu, chief prosecutor).

Release: China, 15 Jan 2021; Taiwan, 29 Jan 2021; Hong Kong, tba.