Rating: B
Dir: Dai Jinyuan
Star: Han Yibo, Zheng Ming, Chen Sanmu, Yang Su
Based off the title and poster, I was not expecting much beyond another Chinese creature feature. It turns out to be considerably more thoughtful and well-constructed than that. What it does share with its shallower siblings is an immediate hook. In this case, a bus full of passengers suddenly find themselves, with no memories, in the middle of a desert, where everything is trying to kill them. And that includes their fellow travellers, with one corpse, origin uncertain, already on board. Fortunately for the sake of the story, numbers are fairly quickly whittled down to five men. They are of dubious morality, and about to fight to the death over half a bottle of water.
Then they find eight-year-old Lele (Yang) hiding on board, and their instincts for parental responsibility immediately kick in. United by this, they begin to work together to figure out what happened, while trying to survive attacks by the unpleasant inhabitants of the realm. They are helped in both tasks by the discovery of an apparent British army base, dating back to the First World War. This is tied into to the legend of a company from the 5th battalion Norfolk Regiment, which reportedly vanished after marching into a cloud at the battle of Gallipoli. [The truth was more mundane] Though military nit-pickers will note the movie gets the battle’s date wrong, and arms them with weapons dating from decades later.
Meanwhile, back in China, we gradually discover Lele was the victim of a kidnap plot, which strongly suggests one of the men on board is her kidnapper. Not that he remembers, of course. There is also reference to a bank robbery. These strands eventually converge, in the tunnel where the bus was driving when it vanished, and the viewer learns what led up to its arrival elsewhere. It’s very engaging, because we are largely kept in the dark, which puts us alongside the characters. They know the same as we do, and it doesn’t need to resort to the usual trickery associated with cinematic amnesia. The players are well-defined, despite not knowing anyone’s name for most of the film. Lele calls them her “five fathers”, identifying them by their attributes.
For example, “little Dad” is… well, little. Four feet two, to be precise and is nicely played by Chen. He is described by Baidu as “China’s first dwarf star,” I guess making him their equivalent to Peter Dinklage. The most conventionally heroic is Lin (Zheng), and it makes sense when you discover his true background. All the elements are put together with care, making it one of the few Chinese genre entries where the script is genuinely an improvement over the effects. Admittedly, this is in part because the titular monsters often feel as if they are casually pasted on top of the live-action footage. Yet, again, it’s a rarity where bad FX didn’t matter, because I was undeniably hooked on the story. Other entries like this would be very welcome.