Painted Skin

A real chore to get from beginning to end. It's got the general plot of a far more interesting movie, but Painted Skin ultimately devolves into a slow moving soap opera made for Chinese teenage girls, a demographic that I have little in common with. The fantasy elements are spare and poorly handled with one or two instances of hideously dated CG. The only saving grace is the final scene, with a relatively decent fight sequence and a minorly satisfying ending.

This reminds me of the old Ronny Yu movies which is a very good thing. The movie starts off a little shakes but once the melodrama starts it gets real good real fast. Yes there is some action & fantasy in this movie but it is really a Drama/Melodrama. Wei Zhao & Kun Chen give strong performances and are really believable in a Melodrama kind of way. Xun Zhou is amazing and I will be checking out more of her films. Donnie Yen is the best part of this movie, maybe because he is a supporting charact

An interesting martial art story decided to take a romance/super-natural angle. As promising as that sounds the ending became much too idealistic based from the classic Good must triumph over evil. Even more so to that, without loss or sacrifice. If you're just looking for an interesting movie with some nice fight scenes then this will certainly amuse all who view it.

Followed by Painted Skin 2: The Resurrection (2012).

Mostly fun for how well-acted it is, there's also some decent martial arts action peppered into what's ultimately a bizarre love story.

Man the characters make completely inexplicable decisions in this one.