Movie Review: Rigor Mortis/殭屍

Rigor Mortis/殭屍  is the directorial debut from pop-star-turned artiste Juno Mak.

He wrote and starred in Revenge: A Love Story, which I didn’t watch.

Because my friendshad seen it and told me about it.

With this new film, Juno moves into the director’s chair for what he calls an homage to Hong Kong’s vampire movies of yesteryear.

“It’s not a dress…”

Chin Siu Ho, who was in Mr. Vampire, plays a washed-up actor who moves into a derelict housing estate with the intention of hanging himself.

“Myself! I wanna do it myself!!!”

This act is interrupted in the most supernatural of ways by a vampire hunter played by Anthony Chan Yau, who was also in Mr. Vampire.

“No, that’s a f@#$ing dress…”

Eventually he finds himself in the middle of a very interesting and very strange group of characters:

Lo Hoi Pang plays Uncle Yin, the caretaker of the estate who knows everyone and everything in the estate.

A visibly disturbed woman named Feng, played by Kara Hui Ying Hung wanders the halls of the estate, eating the food people leave for the spirits and generally acting like the lunatic she most definitely is.

But still looks good doing it.

Her albino son wanders through the movie like an apparition.

Chung Fat, another veteran of the genre, plays Gau, a sorcerer who harbors a secret or 12.

“Shestill looks good…”

Nina Paw Hee Ching plays a woman who will do anything for her husband, played by Richard Ng.

And I do mean anything.

The cast are all very, very good in this movie,  which is (thankfully) completely devoid of pop stars, siliconed mainland bimbos or almost anyone under the age of 40.

The film is carried by these performances, which are strong, subtle, layered and convincing.

The emotional center of the film is Nina Paw, who brings so much humanity to her character that we can not only believe but understand why she does what she does.

And she does some terrible things.

The film looks very nice on a technical level; it’s video, but either I’ve gotten used to looking at it or they’ve gotten better at using it.

I’ll chalk up the film’s aesthetic to Japanese horror director Shimizu Takashi, who produced the film.

And while the look of the film is modern, the subject and much of the action is very familiar to people who know and love Hong Kong vampire movies.

Arcane hand signals, peachwood swords, breath holding, it’s all here.

Well, no yellow robe, but whaddaya gonna do?

The film is at times very slow, and to be honest it does start to drag in places.

I realize the filmmakers were probably trying to establish mood and atmosphere, but ended up doing so at the expense of pacing and story development.

That said, there are enough new twists and added details to update the genre while still remaining faithful to the original idea.

Unfortunately, one of those twists is pretty catastrophic.

SPOILER ALERT:

The ending, or more accurately the postscrīpt, takes all the goodwill the film had built with me and unceremoniously pisses all over it.

There are two explanations I can think of for this ‘twist:’

1) Pretension; the filmmakers wanted to show how witty and hip and edgy they are.

And they fail.

2) Even worse, they manage to tack on this very China-friendly epilogue so that the film doesn’t shut itself off from 1.3 billion people.

Hey, it’s their movie, and they’re free to do as they please.

Whores are people too, let’s remember.

But the worst part of this epilogue for me is that it basically shits in your mouth right at the end of the movie.

Because the first end credit we see is a dedication to Lam Ching Ying and Ricky Hui.

“We deserve better.”

The slap in the face of the epilogue turns what should have been a heartfelt tribute to two very deserving people into a mawkish and cheap ploy for credibility (that you just watched being thrown away).

Rigor Mortis/殭屍is an interesting and frequently entertaining film.

But it manages to throw all that away right at the end.