Rating: D+
Dir: Luoxi Chen, Yekun Liu
Star: Louis Z. Deng, MuQi MiYa, Xiaojun Sun, Menglu Zhang
This seems almost entirely artificial, which is weird. You know how Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow looked? This has a similar feel. I’m not sure there’s a single shot here which took place in the physical environment depicted. It could, quite conceivably, have been completely fabricated with green screen, CGI and that new Unreal Engine technology. When I first saw leading lady Mu Ling (MuQi), I was convinced she was the first heroine in cinematic history generated by ChatGPT. I kept looking at her hands, to see if she had any extra fingers. This whole endeavour feels along those lines, beginning in a title apparently chosen with utter disdain for any cease and desist from Legendary Pictures.
Mind you, the AI used for Ling must have been trained on the collected works of Lara Croft, down to the braid and tank top. She heads off to the titular bit of land in search of a very frequent trope in these movies, the Missing Father™, who vanished while looking for a legendary treasure there. When her ship gets mugged by a kraken, Ling’s ex-boyfriend, an Indiana Jones wannabe bought on Temu, is hired to lead a rescue party. Hu Sha (Deng) does find Ling alive. It’s not long before he finds a lot of other things alive on the island too. These include a giant snake, bugs and critters which fall into the category of “I can’t even”, but are the finest CGI creations ten bucks and a bowl of chow mein can get you.
This leads to a lot of running around underground, quietly, for the monsters hunt their prey by sound. However, the tonal imbalance of the film becomes increasingly apparent here, with the silly comedic elements effectively kneecapping anything else. For instance, there’s a bit where a startled Sha turns round and empties his gun into a party member. It’s played for laughs: the problem is, it devalues death, so when anyone else dies, you’re left waiting for the punchline. As a result, the Big Reveal about the old man they find roaming the island (which is really not much of a surprise) lacks any real dramatic punch, as does the subsequent climax.
It is reasonably energetic, albeit weirdly tinted in just about ever shot. I can’t help feeling that it might have been better, entirely without Hu Sha, as he seems to be the main culprit, when it comes to the not very funny humour. He’s not alone though, or perhaps the random quoting of the most famous line from Forrest Gump lost something in translation. It doesn’t appear to have any particular significance, and comes out of nowhere, just… lying there on the screen. I had no clue how to react. I don’t watch these films for unsubtle callbacks to better, big budget Hollywood films, which add nothing to proceedings, and this relies far too much on that crutch.
This review is part of our feature, When Chinese Animals Attack.