Soul Snatcher

Some caveats for this review - I don't speak Mandarin, and a lot of the spiritual folklore in Asian cinema is lost on me. I feel it's probably easier to understand if you have some Asian cultural heritage.

I knew I was in trouble seconds after the movie started. The opening scene (not a spoiler really) begins with an obviously CGI fox. It's a caricature almost, cartoonish and unconvincing, as are most of the other CGI animals and creatures which follow. I guess they're meant to be whimsical perhaps, complementing the film's campy and shallow characters, who are also unconvincing and impossible to engage with.

The scenes are long and meant to be humorous - they're not. They're dull, unfunny, and painful to watch. There is zero connection with any of the main characters throughout these drawn out encounters.

And the subtitles. I used to enjoy the dodgy English subtitles of 80s and 90s Hong Kong cinema, but it's 2020 now. Maybe the few bucks saved by using Google Translate will dawn a new era of sub-par subtitles in Chinese films. There were at least two words which appear constantly throughout the film, "childe" and "claman" - wish I knew what they meant. But the dialogue in general doesn't make sense. Sure a sentence might sound right, but in a conversation, there was often no context with the dialogue spoken either side of it.

The combination of all these elements makes for a very unpleasant movie experience.

I did actually like the ending, however, I had zoned out so much and nodded off frequently in the last 45 minutes that I only caught glimpses of it.

Masochism viewing level = 11