For this supernatural serial killer flick, director Lun Ah not only adopts the grainy, rain-soaked style of David Fincher's Se7en (a big box-office hit the previous year), but also applies every clichéd technique available to him in the Hong Kong film-makers' bag of tricks. However, no amount of blue lighting, swirling smoke, slow-motion action, canted framing, and fluttering fabric can disguise the fact that Satan Returns is a cheaply produced, poorly considered piece of garbage that not even the presence of Hong Kong hottie Chingamy 'Naked Killer' Yau and top martial arts actor Donnie Yen can save from failure.
The plot, from the pen of prolific writer/producer Wong Jing, sees a murderer named Judas abducting women born on the 6th June 1969 and removing their hearts to see if they are the daughter of the devil (apparently, having no heart makes little difference to a spawn of Satan). Whilst this silly story does allow for the occasional scene of light gore and unimpressive action, the focus of the film is on dull police procedure infused with lame comedy. Only towards the end of the film, do proceedings get a little livelier with the introduction of a couple of zombie cops and a touch of power tool mayhem, but by then it's definitely a case of 'too little, too late'.
A touch more madness throughout, a couple of decent moments of tension, and a lot more gore certainly would've helped matters immeasurably, but as far as I am concerned, the key to success was under the director's nose all along: if he had made better use of Yau's smouldering sexuality (the only time she gets really horny, it is way too literal!), and hadn't allowed poor choreography and bad editing to prevent Yen from successfully displaying his awesome fighting skills, then Satan Returns would have been a whole lot more entertaining.
