Director: Fei Xing
Year: 2018
Country: China
Alternate Titles: Yun nan chong gu
Genre: Action/Fantasy; Creature Feature
Plot:
Hearing of the mythical Ghost Eye curse, an explorer and his Mojin team are told of the only possible cure for the condition that rests in a mythical valley. As they set off to find the pieces required to end it, they find themselves in a mystical valley surrounded by various monsters and other threats that impede their progress and forces the team to work together to continue on their journey. After finally uncovering the truth about what they’re sent to collect, they find the greatest danger lies ahead and must persist through to fulfill their quest.
Review:
For the most part, this emerges as a fine sequel. The film gets a lot to like here from providing strong reasoning to get the team together on their mission with the need to find the mystical objects required to put an end to the devastating curse befalling them. With the opening providing both the reasoning for the curse through the princess’ cruelty and power as well as providing the necessary ingredients for the trip in the orb and crest in her possession that powered the curse, we immediately get an idea of the adventure before them and allows the film to spend more time on the investigation process to find out where they need to go rather than spending half the film decoding the ancient riddle which is a far more enjoyable process.
Since that trip requires an inordinate amount of confrontations with fantastic creatures. From a river filled with man-eating fish voraciously trying to leap out of the water to bite them and getting split up in the process to each group battling it out with a massive lizard in a forest, the action scenes are incredibly fun here. Never developing into outright horror but still quite thrilling, the lengthy encounters allow for plenty of close-calls and ingenious methods of escaping the multitude of creatures thrown at them in the sequences. The adventure tone established here is carried over to the general setup of these encounters where a fantasy element to the world created in the final half where the team encounters the giant scorpions or a massive snake guarding the sacred village that becomes a massive battle throughout the ruins of the area. All told, these here provide the film with a lot to like about it.
There are still some problems with this one. The film manages to get sidetracked in the latter half here with a surprisingly offbeat touch to the story by completely dropping the adventure aspect to get into an oddly existential series of discussions about their mortality and the ethical qualms of continuing on their journey. This conversation feels incredibly out of place in the film by tackling a far more serious and grounded topic than what should appear in an action-packed fantasy epic. As well, this ends up stopping the film cold to dwell on this conversation for several minutes as they give impassioned speeches about the futility of carrying on and then the actions in the big battle end up contradicting that anyway by wiping it aside to just deal with the same format they’ve been doing anyway. It’s an odd inclusion in the film, which along with the CGI-heavy action scenes that are forced into the film because of the circumstances of the scenes, are all that really hold this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
Though it comes with a few minor issues that do bring it down a tad, overall this one has enough gripping monster action and a mainly fun feel to have a lot to like. Give it a shot if you’re into these kinds of fantasy-driven action/adventure films or enjoyed the original, while those put off by the few flaws here should heed caution.
This review was originally published on Asian Movie Pulse and is gratefully reprinted with their cooperation.
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