Night Invasion – review

Director: WаngJun*

Release date: 2016*

Contains spoilers

*these are taken from the Amazon Video data. Note that this is often inaccurate but I couldn’t readily track down an IMDb page or a corresponding entry in the Hong Kong movie database.

The great thing about Amazon Video is that Amazon are dredging through some obscure movies from around the globe. The problem with Amazon Video is much the same as some of these films are really dredged up from somewhere where they should have remained and rotted into obscurity.

ghost kid

This film begins with us being told that some people die but linger as we see scenes of a road accident. We cut to a man (I assume meant to be the storyteller, perhaps even the movie director) and as he speaks he plays with the on-screen credits, which was a nice 4th wall manipulation. He switches a light off and we see the shape of a young boy in the dark, the shape vanishes when the lights go back on. Eventually he is by the man and screams.

in the kitchen cupboard

A car is parked and the girl in the back, NuoNuo, seems asleep. She awakens and tries to pay the unresponsive driver. A second girl approaches the car and NuoNuo gets out and they go to a house. They have found the house on the internet and the rent seems impressively cheap. The landlady lets them in but, out of sight of the girls, is constantly pushing a kyonsi out of sight (back in a kitchen cupboard for instance). We note that the creature is referred to as zombie but is a kyonsi.

holding their breath

The landlady gets them to sign a contract (she refers to it as a death contract), tells them not to go to the sealed room and then leaves. The boyfriends come over but, very soon, the door to the house has vanished and the kyonsi is pursuing them. There is a twist at the end but little other plot. Whilst the kyonsi does little that is vampiric it does hop and they do cover their mouths to hide from it (kyonsi follow breath rather than see). At one point they disguise themselves as kyonsi (which breaks the internal logic if the kyonsi is hunting by smelling their breath rather than sight).

dressed like Irma Vep

We got a moment where they end up fighting whilst wearing costumes and the girls look like they are dressed as Irma Vep. The problem with this is part limited setting (they are stuck in a house), part poor direction and confused story (which might have had much to do with the subtitles) and blooming awful acting generally – more melodrama than method. A poor film with a couple of clever moments, 2.5 out of 10.

At the time of review I could not find an IMDb page.