Rating: D
Dir: Lei Lu.
Star: Liqun Luo, Qimeng Cheng, Bairong Li, Yang Ming.
a.k.a. Chang’An Fog Monster.
I guess we do now have a definitive answer to the question: how boring can a film barely lasting an hour possibly be? We find here, it’s pretty damn dull. I was fully on board with the concept of a Chinese wuxia knock-off of Stephen King’s The Mist. But outside of a few minutes of cool monsters, this has precious little to offer. It doesn’t dare attempt to reproduce the famously bleak ending. Instead, it opts for a feel-good alternative where the rescue party do instead turn up, and the main character, a prince in the royal family, vows to become a nicer person – the one the people who sacrificed their lives believe him to be.
Despite some ropey opening effects, with a thoroughly unconvincing CGI bird, it does hit the ground running. The fog descends on the town of Chang’an, concealing a massive, tenticular creation, and the myriad of monsters it spawns/controls. This drives the travelling, incognito prince (Cheng) and his bodyguard, Xiao (Luo), into the sanctuary of a nearby guesthouse, along with the expected array of other characters. These include a beggar (Ming), swordswoman (Li), courtesan, etc. Bickering, infighting, and failed attempts to go outside, all follow in a manner familiar to anyone who has seen Darabont’s original. What there isn’t, however, is much in the way of monsters. It’s a pity, since they’re kinda cool, like the ones which resemble flying demogorgons from Stranger Things.
Instead, we get a lot of stuff which either is lost in the dub, or was never very interesting to begin with. This is a film which hardly has time to bother giving anyone a name, yet still finds three minutes for the courtesan to do a dance routine. Priorities, people! She ends up getting her face nibbled (top), and immediately commits suicide, in the most underwhelming self unaliving I’ve seen. There are bludgeoning attempts at social commentary, with the beggar in particular critical of the monarchy. While opinions among the besieged vary, in general, the royal family do not seem particularly well-liked. This comes as a bit of a surprise to the prince, leading to the change of heart mentioned above.
I can’t even bring myself to tag this as a When Chinese Animals Attack movie, since the creatures here are entirely fantastical in nature. As in the King original, there’s no real explanation for their existence: here, it’s “magic arts” which are blamed, and that’s as good as anything, I suppose. Their execution very much pins this in the early days of Chinese streaming content, especially when it comes to highly limited interactions with the human cast. I will grudgingly admit, it is well-photographed, and the sets appear to have been on loan from a much better production. If there’s a moral here, it seems to be that we just need to lock our politicians up and throw monsters at them, until they decide to do better. I can find no fault in that idea.