The Boxer's Omen

While watching The Boxer's Omen, I was reminded of the Japanese horror movie Hausu (or House in English) from 1977. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, but with the caveat that it is an absolute fever-dream assault on your senses. The insanity of Hausu has purpose, though. As utterly insane as the movie can be, there is a thread through it all, giving the madness purpose. The madness itself isn't the atmosphere, but the product of it. The Boxer's Demon, unfortunately, is the opposite. Like Hausu, it has some absolutely mind-bogglingly weird imagery, and fires it at the viewer like machine gun bullets. But unlike Hausu, The Boxer's Omen's weirdness IS the aesthetic. It doesn't inform the movie, it doesn't come from the story the movie is trying to tell; it's there to cover up the movie's inherent emptiness beneath the strange visuals. Part of the problem is that the movie is trying to tell two stories at the same time. The first story is of Chan Hung, whose brother is paralyzed in a kickboxing match. Hung (a Hong Kong gangster, a fact which plays no discernible role in the proceedings) vows revenge. The second story is that Hung finds out, in a past life, he was the twin brother of a recently deceased Buddhist priest who was assassinated by an evil wizard, and if Hung does not become a Buddhist monk, embrace his heritage, and defeat the evil wizard, he will die when the deceased monk's body decomposes. Got that? These two stories intersect, but they never really intertwine. One of them has to stop so the other can start. This leaves The Boxer's Omen already feeling disjointed, like someone tried mashing together Kickboxer and Big Trouble In Little China. But then there's the characters, or I should say, character. Hung is the only character the movie follows; the Buddhist monks are Buddhist monks. The rival kickboxer is cocky and mean. The evil wizards are cackling cartoon evil. And the whole two women in this movie (Hung's girlfriend, and an undead magic warrior) spend 95% of their screen time fully nude and the camera taking its time documenting that. Only Hung gets any focus, but he never gets development; he becomes a Buddhist monk because his life is in danger. He goes back to kickboxing because he defeats the wizard and wants revenge. He goes back to the monastery because the evil wizards had evil wizard friends that aren't happy their buddy got his skull melted (seriously). He's a character only insofar as he is a living human being with a name and dialogue; in any other sense of the word, he's barely more than a mechanism for moving the plot forward. He does not grow, he does not evolve, he does not learn anything. And the two stories being told just don't have enough, even when combined, to carry a story. The kickboxing story is ripped from a thousand martial arts movies, and literally nothing whatsoever is done different with it. The other side is where the weirdness comes in, but all the puppets and animation and papier-mâché and naked undead magic warriors in the world can't hide the fact that the movie is just jingling keys. The visuals are impressive in their inventiveness, absolutely; there were several moments where it got me to raise an eyebrow. But it all just felt like visual noise to me to cover up for a rather ho-hum story and a lead with the depth of a tissue. Maybe if all you're looking for is memorable visuals, this can be appreciated as wild ride through the imagination of a special effects department working on overdrive,. And make no mistake, I do commend them for both the imaginative ideas they brought to life, and the volume of them. But, if you've read any other of my reviews of highly stylized movies, then you know that visual style does not impress me enough to make me like a movie. Substance wins over style every day of the week. I'm not a cat, I don't get excited by a laser pointer on the wall, and that's all movies like The Boxer's Omen are.