Well Go USA
I don’t see a lot of Chinese movies, but the ones I tend to prefer are the martial arts ones. It’s hardly the only genre, but sometimes I find that the dramas are kinda derivative and melodramatic. Their movie industry is relatively new, so it’s understandable. But still, language and cultural barrier and all that. Makes it tricky.
Phantom of the Theatre is a Chinese-language film from director Raymond Yip, and takes place in the early 20th century in China. In a small city ruled by local warlord Gu Mingshan (Simon Yan), a new star is on the rise. This is Meng Sifan (Ruby Lin), a new actress catching the zeitgeist with a lot of explicit exposition. As she tries to handle creeps and fools, young director Gu Weibang (Tony Yang) has two inspirations: one is Meng Sifan as the star of his new meta-story, the other is an abandoned old movie theatre.
Why abandoned? Because of rumors of deadly ghosts. We see early on evidence of ghosts, or are they? The movie tries to have it both ways, and it doesn’t quite work. A few twists and turns also don’t really make sense, but I’d be spoiling them to explain why. Anyway, at first it seems that only bad people, thieves and perverts are getting killed by the ghosts. Weibang is still dead set on making that movie!
As you may have expected by his name, he’s the son of Gu Mingshan, the sinister warlord, estranged because of his dead mother. So there’s baggage, because the father doesn’t approve, etc. So the stakes are there, the director making his first movie, overcoming the haunted theatre, and being his own man. The actress has her own mysterious past and connection to the ghosts, perhaps.
Everything ties together exceptionally neatly, perhaps too much so. I feel like the movie had a lot of issues in places where it tried to explain things, letting characters literally spout explanations and backstories that could’ve been explained more subtly. This is not a knock on the actors, who are a mixed bag. Some of the tertiary characters are caricatures, made as such to more easily be happy when they are gruesomely killed.
Others add some additional pathos, while the main ones are pretty good. I think Simon Yam was particularly good as the intimidating warlord, someone with hidden mysteries of his own. Tony Yang was similarly decent, having a lot of time on screen giving longing looks at Meng Sifan. His tragic romance storyline with her often felt kind of contrived.
The romance didn’t really build to me that well, starting oddly, getting a bit effective, and then halting. The pacing for this angle wasn’t that great, and the pacing for the horror mystery was a little weird too. That said, the movie flowed pretty well once it got going, even if the final few minutes of many, many twists got a bit silly.
This isn’t the sort of movie that will really scare the hardcore horror fans out there, this is a milder effort. It’s a bit like a placeholder for future movies to me, like this is the foundation for future CGI-laden horror romances. In general I mostly liked the movie, but it’s not really my sort of thing. I can cut them a bit of slack because this is a bit new in the scheme of things, but ultimately it’s a bit forgettable.
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