Fantasy, it can now be claimed with some confidence, just isn't Wilson Yip's bag. The past five or six years have seen an impressive run of form from the director, and not solely because of his alliance with Donnie Yen. 2006's DRAGON TIGER GATE is a film I struggle to glean much enjoyment from, but S.P.L. (KILL ZONE), FLASH POINT, IP MAN and IP MAN 2 have clearly charted the evolution of a director finding his feet and rightly taking his place among Hong Kong's very best filmmakers. While personally I prefer S.P.L. over FLASHPOINT and the first IP MAN over the second, there is no denying that purely from a technical standpoint, each new film outdoes its predecessors. The acclaim and financial success seem to have pushed Yip to breaking point, however, as his latest project is not only ill-advised in its intensions - a remake of Ching Siu-Tung's beloved A CHINESE GHOST STORY - but turns out to be a vacuous and tedious CGI-laden crapfest.
Shifting its focus away from the character of Ning (originally played by Leslie Cheung and here taken on by mainland actor Yu Shao-qun) the film instead hones in on demon hunter Yan (Louis Koo). In theory this could make for an intriguing re-interpretation, and present the opportunity for more action, but that is not the case. Yan has unwisely fallen in love with a demon - Siu Sin (Liu Yifei) - and after a brief affair, the moment comes to dispense of her. Naturally, Yan is unable to go through with it, and opts to wipe her memory instead, a decision that fails to sit well with rival hunter, Liu (Fan Siu Wong), especially as he recently lost an arm defending Yan against just such a ghoul.
Wimpy government official, Ning (Yu), meanwhile, arrives at his newly assigned outpost, only to discover that the town is suffering from a crippling drought. The town elders, led by Elvis Tsui (who appeared in the original version of the film), delegate responsibility to Ning to scale the mountain and find out what's become of their water supply, only for him to meet and fall in love with Siu Sin - now under the tyrannical governance of tree demon Lou Lou (Kara Hui), who is also responsible for the lack of water. It is around about this point that the film's plot begins to swiftly collapse in on itself and descend into one long, repetitive and over-bearingly bombastic effects showcase, which while no doubt beneficial to the Korean effects house responsible for turning Kara Hui into a shrieking, swirling, all-engulfing mass of branches, vines and goodness knows what else, those audience members looking for coherent narrative closure or anything vaguely reminiscent of the original will be left bored, confused and more than a little disorientated.
The sad truth is that Yip's A CHINESE GHOST STORY has precious little going for it. Fan Siu Wong emerges head and shoulders above his co-stars as the standout performance of the film, and for the precious few moments that he is onscreen, the film is entertaining, vivacious and even exciting on occasion, largely thanks to two rather nifty fight scenes. It's small recompense however, as the film seems intent on developing a love triangle between three bland, one-note characters while careening towards an unexpectedly tragic finale that fails to be in the least bit emotionally wrenching.
We all understand, Wilson, that Donnie Yen isn't the easiest man in this town to work with, and that the pressures of success and public expectation can be suffocating, but A CHINESE GHOST STORY is the cinematic equivalent of dashing out of a board meeting, ripping your clothes off and screaming naked at the traffic. It represents everything that his previous couple of films deliberately stayed away from, in terms of narrative, aesthetics and entertainment value. One can only hope that Yip has now gotten all of whatever it was out of his system and is ready to go back to making quality films that fans around the world have been lapping up. However, by the sounds of MODEL MUM, his upcoming romantic comedy, in which identical twins (one a super model, one a single mother) trade places, no doubt with hilarious consequences, we may have a little while longer to wait.