Legend of the Demon Cat
Chen Kaige’s Legend of the Demon Cat is a sumptuous feast for the eyes, a dazzling spectacle that feels a little too Hollywood coming from the director of the Academy Award-nominated and Palme D’Orwinning This international co-production, which features a stellar cast of Chinese and Japanese actors, brings a twist to the wuxia martial-arts genre that Ang Lee’s 2000 film Tiger, Hidden Dragon ushered into mainstream popularity. For Legend of the Demon Cat, Kaige mines the realms of gothic horror as well as fantasy and folklore. Its unrestrained use of special effects serves to distract from the fact that the story itself is lacking and implausible.
Set in the 7th century during China’s imperial Tang Dynasty, the film tells the story of Bai Letian (Xuan Huang), a Chinese poet who joins forces with Kukai (Shoˉ ta Sometani), a Japanese monk, to investigate a mysterious case of demonic possession. Their sleuthing uncovers a story from many I years earlier involving the death of a beautiful concubine, Yang Guifei (Sandrine Pinna), designated as one of China’s Four Beauties, fabled figures renowned for their heavenly appeal. The Four Beauties are actual legends from China’s past, but so little is actually known about their real lives that one imagines a story about demon cat possession, while far-fetched, isn’t going to raise any hackles.
Featuring a massive set that took five years to build (to the tune of more than $200 million),
is something to behold — but the same is true of a host of films in the same genre. The derivative offers little we haven’t seen before.
Kukai, who is based on the real-life figure who traveled to China to study at Buddhist temples, has experience performing rites of exorcism. He is summoned to the royal court of Emperor Xuanzong (Zhang Luyi), the victim of an apparent curse. After the discovery of cat hairs in Xuanzong’s chambers, he and Bai Letian (Huang Xuan), an imperial scribe based on Chinese poet Bai Juyi, follow a series of clues that lead them from the royal palace to an opulent bordello full of young beauties. There, the murderous cat makes its first real appearance in the midst of an erotic dance sequence. But the historical notes in the film are just jumping-off points for flights of pure fantasy.
On the trail of the rampaging feline, a black cat who is rumored to possess the ability to talk, they learn that Yang Guifei was strangled on the emperor’s orders 30 years earlier for political reasons. The murdered concubine’s spirit, in feline form, is seeking revenge.
Setting aside an extravagantly muddled plot, the characters virtually drown in the ensuing over-thetop CGI-fest that ensues. But one doesn’t go to a movie with “demon cat” in the title expecting a dramatic character study.
Gruesome, at times, but palatably so, this is the kind of horror film where even flowing blood serves as a visual treat. Kaige’s film has lots of style but little substance. The attention to detail in the construction of an entire city (apparently converted into a theme park after the production wrapped) seems an exercise in pure excess, especially since so much else, including lavish banquets where a multitude of dancers perform and where magicians treat revelers to enchanting feats of illusion, relies on digital animation for their effect. Legend of the Demon Cat has the production scope of an epic, but its content is pulp fiction. — Michael Abatemarco