Lost In Apocalypse

Lost In Apocalypse [sic] (2018) aka Mo Shi Ren Jian Dao

Dir. Sky Wang

Written by Sky Wang, Fei'er Zhao, Baiying Wu (story), based on the comics by Ruibo Cao

Starring Tianming Yang, Yang Yang, Yinan Zhang, Yuchao Wang

            On a whim, I sampled some modern Chinese (mainland, not Hong Kong) horror cinema last year with the infuriatingly terrible SINGULAR CAY, a film so absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel abysmal that I felt it was almost cruel to not give China a chance to redeem itself this year. Any country can have an off day, after all. What if I was a Chinese movie blogger and the only American horror film I’d ever reviewed was IT’S IN THE BLOOD? Wouldn’t be very fair. So when I saw that the AFI was screening LOST IN APOCALYPSE with this year’s annual Spooky Movie Festival, I thought it must be fate. 

           And maybe it was, but if it was fate, it was fate telling me not to bother next year, because LOST IN APOCALYPSE, while not as desperately miserable and inept as SINGULAR CAY, is pretty damn low on anything worth defending.

It is the tale of several people who are at some kind of ill-defined business meeting about a school (maybe it’s clearer what the fuck is going on in the original Mandarin, but the subtitles turn it into a completely inscrutable mystery) when a zombie outbreak happens (the kind with the running zombies). Most of these people are either complete cyphers or horrible assholes, so they argue and snipe at each other for a long time, pick up a recently orphaned little girl (Qianhua Chen, GUARDIANS OF THE TOMB), and eventually they pile in a car and drive to this big abandoned warehouse or factory or something. Again, it’s weirdly unclear what this place is, or who the guys in orange jumpsuits that seem to live there are, or what the connection is to any of the other victims. “Director Wu” (possibly Fengzhu Jia [THE CRAZY KELP], though IMDB doesn’t list the character’s name) seems to have some kind of business relationship with them, but I thought he was the head of a school? I don’t know if it’s just standard practice in China that every school “director” is also issued a dilapidated warehouse complex full of jumpsuited henchmen or what. But anyway, they go there, and the guys in orange suits obviously turn out to be even bigger assholes than the zombies, and they naturally want to rape the little girl.* So it’s up to the least unpleasant of them (Martin Yang, no other IMDB credits) to escape from an easily escapable death trap (thrown into a room with an angry zombie, but it turns out the room just has another door you can walk out of) and, I dunno, learn the true meaning of sacrificing yourself for the greater good or whatever.

Gripping, gripping stuff.

 So now you’re saying “OK, and then what?” And this is the trouble. That’s the whole thing: there is a group of generally obnoxious people that are first stuck in a meeting room, and then show up at a warehouse and get tied up and lightly menaced by some assholes before the zombies inevitably get loose again and the most tolerable guy fights the least tolerable guy and everyone else has to heroically sacrifice themselves to allow the women and children to get away. Roll credits. It’s all tarted up slightly with a spectacularly unnecessary shuffled chronology which starts in the middle and flashes back to the beginning, but that one run-on sentence handily covers every significant event in the entire movie. There are zero surprises here, nary a single frame in the whole thing which isn’t baseline standard zombie movie boilerplate. I mean, nothing. Not a single new concept, not one clever gimmick, not one imaginative twist, not a solitary memorable horror beat. It’s exactly everything you would expect at the bare-bones minimum for some low-budget zombie trash SyFy channel original movie, and absolutely nothing more. And fuck, even SyFy would want at least some kind of hook in there, like a zombie tornado or a Dractopus or something. 

            Such a punishing dearth of imagination would be a difficult, but by no means impossible, deficiency for a zombie movie to overcome; after all, plenty of perfectly fine genre movies have been content to play out the expected beats without tinkering with a good thing. In point of fact, many overly ambitious movies with eyes to reinvent the genre have managed to completely bungle a surefire formula. But LOST IN APOCALYPSE not only doesn’t offer anything fresh and imaginative, it just plain doesn’t offer anything. Zero good deaths, no gnarly zombie makeup, not even any significant gore! Heck, with the exception of a few translated curse words and the threat (thankfully never delivered) of child rape, you could easily play this unedited on TV with not a moment altered. As horror movies go, it’s a shockingly PG affair. 

This is about the most elaborate zombie makeup you're gonna get.

            This being a Chinese movie, of course, in place of that gore is: melodrama. I’m not a political scientist but I’m pretty sure it’s written in their Constitution that all movies, no matter how trashy and exploitative, must, by law, feature at least four scenes where sad piano music comes up and somebody flashes back to the time a sad thing happened to them, and then says something earnest and polite, and then stares into the middle distance sadly. This happens an intolerable amount in LOST IN APOCALYPSE, but unlike the Korean TRAIN TO BUSAN (from whence it cribs any plot elements not lifted from 28 DAYS LATER), the melodrama feels completely tracked-on and unimportant, and the characters, despite the punishing amount of time we spend listening to them explain their tedious life stories, are all dishwater-dull archetypes with one or less defining personality trait. Our hero, the most tolerable one, has only one thing about him, which is that he is embarrassed he dropped out of college years ago and is now a driver. That’s it, that’s his whole character motivation, and it feels like it must take 30 minutes of screentime to establish that, not that it ends up mattering one iota (in fact, it’s made even more insipid by the fact that a zombie apocalypse has recently rendered all quotidien social status utterly moot, a fact which appears to never once occur to the movie). So the biggest emotional turmoil in the film comes from shame over never getting a diploma which is wholly worthless now. And the rest of the characters are even less interesting than that.

            It's technically more competent than SINGULAR CAY, and vaguely more focused, but then again, it also doesn't have that movie's advantage of being fucking insane. It's just phenomenally undistinguished. It's the cinematic equivalent of a tepid glass of plain water. Maybe there's nothing terribly wrong with it, but surely anyone interested in making a meal ought to aspire to more. Fortunately, just as I was starting to really think Chinese cinema had completely disappointed me again, I remembered that, like most things in this world, when you look closely you’ll realize that it’s actually America’s fault. Director Sky Wang, as it turns out, was born in Shenyang, China, but “immigrated to the West in his formative years,” as his IMDB puts it. He’s lived in the UK, Canada, and the US, and has a degree from University of Columbia, Chicago. In fact, his two previous short films (from 2010 and 2012) are both in English, and this is his first Chinese credit of any kind. Which means that, damn it, this still wasn’t a fair shot for Mainland Chinese cinema. It’d be like judging John Woo’s career from watching BROKEN ARROW and PAYCHECK. Which means it looks like I’m doomed to try another one next year. Lost in Apocalypse indeed.

           Alternate Opinion: “Lost in Apocalypse" will trigger your mind to think in a twisted manner but then again it will align you in the path of truth, to acknowledge the anomalies of the human mind and to learn to accept it as it comes. If I had to sum this film up in one line, it would be "The Awakening of Human conscience albeit through acceptance." -- IMDB user “CultCriticMovieAwards” August 2, 2018. Looking at his comment history makes it apparent that he's some kind of shill who gets paid to give excessively positive reviews to crappy little movies no one has ever heard of, but you gotta appreciate his willingness to really swing for the fences on this one.

*   In fact, they really remind one of the asshole soldiers who do the exact same thing in 28 DAYS LATER (which in turn makes one ponder the many, many other purely coincidental similarities between the two movies), except this is made for a mainland Chinese audience and they damn sure aren’t going to be saying anything bad about soldiers.

Good question.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	None apparent. Come on China, you don’t get to be the world’s foremost superpower without upping your tagline game a little.
TITLE ACCURACY	I’m confused about the ungrammatical title, because most of the on-screen translation seems OK. Maybe it’s a metaphor, or it makes more sense in Mandarin?
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Yes, supposedly adapted from the comic by Ruibo Cao, though a Google search reveals nothing whatsoever of the kind, and the only thing I can definitively find online attributed to a “Rubio Cao” is what appears to be a book of French cartoon erotica entitled (NSFW)“l'ombre et le feu 2.” EDIT: Oh wait, looks like it's an anthology and he did only one part, if the identified author "Cao R" really is the same guy. Anyway, the translated version of the French review from manga-news.com raves, "Once again, the program is varied while focusing on a refined eroticism. On the other hand, and it is a pity, clearly less historical references are given here." Sounds pretty classy. Also WARNING, that link is just to amazon, but there are boobs on the front cover of the book, and you don't want to get fired by clicking on an amazon link for maybe a book written by the obscure author of a comic on which this crappy movie is allegedly based. Or maybe you do, hell, I don't know. You do you.
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	None
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	China
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Zombie, Apocalyptic horror
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	None
NUDITY?	None
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	The threat of child rape, though it mercifully doesn’t ever actually happen
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	No
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	A decent surfeit of zombies
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	No
EVIL CULT?	None.
MADNESS?	None
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Just human into zombie.
VOYEURISM?	None
MORAL OF THE STORY	Like all modern Chinese movies trying to suck up to the government, there can really be only one moral: Really the most important thing in life is sacrificing yourself for the good of the group.

The Slayer

The Slayer (1982)

Dir J.S. Cardone

Written by J.S. Cardone and William R. Ewing

Starring Sarah Kendall, Frederick Flynn, Carol Kottenbrook

Let me ask you something. What’s the best part of a schlock 80’s slasher movie? Would you say it’s A) imaginative and gory kills, and as gimmicky as possible please? Or would you say it’s B) the part where emphatically dull white people wander aimlessly around looking for their missing friends and nothing happens?

If you picked option A, congratulations, you’re not special. That’s the option everyone in the 80’s picked. But sophmore writer/director J.S. Cardone (later writer of THE STEPFATHER REMAKE and director of 8MM2 and WICKED LITTLE THINGS) is a maverick. Like Mel Gibson in that movie MAVERICK, where he’s such a Maverick I think he’s actually named Maverick, and not even his middle name like a little pussy, his actual last name, so everyone has to call him that all the time. That’s the kind of maverick it would take to try the bold move of taking a standard bodycount slasher, removing the bodycount, and seeing what was left. Turns out not much, unfortunately, but hey, I guess it was worth a try.

The plot is simple enough that it barely even qualifies as a plot, more of a scenario, really -- not that horror movies ever needed elaborate narratives or fussy structuring. Kay (Sarah Kendall, the beloved role of Stewardess #2 in KARATE KID PART 2, no other roles) is a neurotic artist, plagued by dreams that a monster is coming to kill her. Some kind of Slayer, if you will. Her irritating husband and brother-and-sister-in-law think she needs a vacation, and correctly find her constant fretting to be unreasonable and ridiculous. But of course she’s right -- this is a horror movie after all-- something is coming to kill them. But slowly. Very, very slowly. So slowly that even though you know this is a horror movie called THE SLAYER, you still start to wonder if the abrasive in-laws might have a point with the whole “maybe living every moment in fear of of a monster from your dreams is not a practical way to approach vacationing” argument.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a solid little slasher when it sets its mind to be. It’s better-made than the lion’s share of its ilk, nicely photographed* (well-utilizing some appreciably decrepit real locations) and assembled with confidence, even occasional style. And when the kills come, they’re commendably over-the-top (one guy has a particularly memorable run-in with an unforgiving trap door). But the movie has to savor them, because, and there’s no nice way to say this… there’s really only four characters in this movie, and that leaves only three of them to kill off during the increasingly tedious 70 minutes which lead up to the climax. You gotta wait 30 minutes just to get the the first kill, and then another 30 minutes til the next one. And I’m sorry, but that’s absolutely unacceptable for a gimmicky slasher with absolutely nothing else going on. All three kills we see on-screen are pretty good, but man. It’s pretty dire going in-between.

The movie is probably best known for its one little tweak on the classic slasher formula, which is that (SPOILER) it belongs to that small subset of slashers where the killer turns out to be some kind of nonhuman monster, like NIGHT OF THE DEMON (not the classic 1957 psycho-thriller by Jacques Tourneur, I mean the sleazy 1980 slasher where bigfoot rips a guy’s dick off) or JEEPERS CREEPERS or NEON MANIACS. Not exactly shaking the foundations of horror filmmaking, but this would be a perfectly serviceable gimmick if it figured into the plot or the few scattered kills, you know, at all. Unfortunately, our titular SLAYER (I think that must be him; I don’t remember her husband’s name being John Slayer or anything) apparently shares an agent with Lance Henriksen, because his MO here is to be far and away the best thing about the movie and then to appear in as little of it as possible. Despite an enjoyably gonzo design, he has, generously, about three second of screen time, and does not appear during any of the three kills. It certainly adds a little much-needed spice, but not even close to enough to make this worthwhile. And what good is a monster-themed slasher if you only know that’s what it is in the last 5 seconds? You gotta own that shit, fellas.

I will say one nice thing about it: It has a strangely excellent orchestral score (performed by an actual orchestra! 4 serious, no keyboards!) by prolific composer Robert Folks, in only his second film score. He would go on to score such cinematic gems as POLICE ACADEMY, POLICE ACADEMY 4: CITIZENS ON PATROL, IN THE ARMY NOW, LAWNMOWER MAN 2: BEYOND CYBERSPACE, ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS, and THUMB WARS: THE PHANTOM CUTICLE. Ouch. But at least back in 1982, he was really trying. Someone should put that score in an actual movie someday. I get the sense that THE SLAYER is trying too, but there’s just not enough meat on these bones to make a meal.

(PS: I didn't want to SPOILER SPOILER the 3 good seconds at the very end of the movie by putting a picture of the killer in the review, but I did make this gif of it if you're curious.)

*By Karen Grossman, cinematographer for J.S. Cardone’s follow-up Rock N’ Roll drama THUNDER ALLEY, and the mysterious HAMBURGER: THE MOTION PICTURE, starring Dick Butkus. But I’ll always remember her from her one acting roll as “Hall Marshall” in RISKY BUSINESS.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• TAGLINE: Is It A Nightmare, Or Is It... THE SLAYER? (hint: it's the Slayer. Unless that weird twist at the end is meant to indicate it isn't.)
• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: None, which is a shame, because this is exactly the kind of thing which would have been legit good by the fourth sequel.
• REMAKE: No, not that there's really anything to "remake" here anyway
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: USA
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Good god, no.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None
• BOOBIES: None, although there's a kind of sheer nightie
• MULLETS: None
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Head removed
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: (spoiler)
• THE UNDEAD: None
• POSSESSION: No.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: Yes.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: None
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• EGYPTO-CRYPTO: No
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: None
• VOYEURISM: Nah
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: AIl of your friends' most paranoid neuroses are absolutely correct, and you would be a reckless fool to disregard them simply because they're insultingly preposterous, and indeed, would be inviting (and maybe even deserving) death.
• TITLE ACCURACY: There's some slaying, which necessitates a slayer, though I don't think anyone ever uses that name.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

(and honestly, this is being a little generous, it's a pretty iffy C-. But the last few seconds leave me feeling charitable)