Nothing
challenges a viewer’s impulse to impose narrative continuity like the three
films and three television series based on the bestselling Chinese novel
franchise, Ghost Blows Out the Light.
The first two films, Mojin: The Lost Legend and Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe were produced by different companies and featured completely
different casts. The third film has been positioned as a sequel to Lost Legend, but makes slightly more sense
as a prequel (only slightly). It is hard to see how the films could possibly
fit together, considering the central relationships vary from film to film.
Maybe it all makes sense if you include the TV series (two of the three feature
the same cast and creatives). To further confuse fans, there is yet another
entirely new cast portraying the popular characters in Fei Xing’s Mojin: The Worm Valley (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Eons
ago, a despotic queen cursed her unruly subjects and all their descendants with
a brand on the back shoulder and an early death. Alas, the curse persists to
this day, including for several of the adventurers associated with tomb “borrowers”
Hu Bayi and Shirley Yang. The have an expedition planned deep into the heart of
Worm Valley to recover an artifact that might lift the curse. Or something like
that.
Technically,
there are no worms in Worm Valley, but there are giant crabs, scorpions, snakes
(close enough), and lizards. If you really want to be pedantic, there are not
any ghosts either. Logic is also pretty scarce in these parts as well, but it works
pretty well as an At the Earth’s Core-Skull Island-style monster movie. The
assorted creature effects mostly maintain the right balance of believability and
cheesiness (fans will understand what that means).
Lost Legend was a box office
smash in the Chinese-language markets, so it is hard to fathom why Worm Valley brought in an entirely new
cast, but the less recognizable names were surely more affordable. Gu Xuan has
the difficult task of subbing in for Shu Qi, but she is still the best thing
going for the film, making a much more convincing Shirley Yang than Alicia
Vikander did as a Lara Croft. Cai Heng is an energy-sapping Gloomy Gus as Hu,
but Cheng Taishen adds some maturity and seasoning as Sun Jiaoshou, the academic
scholar on the expedition. Yet, it is Chen Yusi who lands the film’s big
emotional scene as Zhou Linglong, the cursed daughter of Sun’s senior
colleague.
Ironically,
Worm Valley is probably less confusing
if you have not seen any of the previous Ghost
Blows Out the Light films (we can’t even speculate about the TV series).
Yet, there is logic to Fei’s strategy. Instead of wasting time with dubious
retcons, he has giant kaiju monsters chasing Hu and Yang, early and often.
There is a good deal of meathead fun throughout Worm Valley, but it will make the hobgoblins of consistency in fans’
heads explode. Recommended for fans of Lost
World and Land of the Lost fantasy-adventure,
Mojin: The Worm Valley opens this
Friday (1/4) in New York, at the AMC Empire.