Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of Nine Demons; here's the breakdown of my ratings:
Story: 1.50
Direction: 1.75
Pace: 1.50
Acting: 0.75
Enjoyment: 1.25
TOTAL: 6.75 out of 10.00.
Let me state from the outstart, my rating is due to the version I had the pleasure of watching. The trouble is that it was the dubbed English edition. Unfortunately, the dubbing is so horrendous it affected the ratings badly.
Kuang Ni's story is about power, corruption, deceit, and revenge. Within their village, Joey and Gary's fathers are two of the most influential and wealthiest men, though there are plans afoot to usurp them of their power. One of their servants has deceived them, killed the cooking staff and hired a band of brutal killers to poison the families at their next get-together meal. However, one of them realises there's poison in the food, which leads to a superb martial arts scene: Killing the last senior member of the families and allowing one of their sons to escape. The Black Prince of Hell summons the fugitive to his lair and offers Joey a deal. No sooner has he observed Garry's fate than he's selling his soul to save his friend and to get revenge on the perpetrators of their fathers' murders. To which, The Black Prince bestows upon him the power to control The Nine Demons. Eight child-like Imps and their Mother. The demons are whirling dervishes of joyful disaster and possess an unquenchable thirst for blood. Joey wears their skulls as a macabre necklace. For them to take form, the skulls need to feast on the scarlet nectar of life. Once they have enough, they can take shape and wreak havoc. Kuang Ni does a brilliant job of keeping the story intriguing and flowing at a steady pace. Once you believe the revenge will stop, another twist prolongs Joey's retribution.
Cheh Chang's direction comes in three modes. The first is his conventional approach to the none action sequences. These are a tad heavy and can be slightly dull, especially considering the appalling English dubbing. However, he lights the scenes well and keeps them nicely composed. His second mode is the martial arts fighting scenes. These offer a little more inventiveness in the filming. He attempts to add excitement to the fisty-and-feety-cuffs by utilising various camera angles. Alas, this doesn't always work. The failure comes from his tendency to hold a shot in the frame too long from one position. I love martial arts movies and adore how many directors show the entire fight, not by using close-ups but by displaying the entire body and its range of complicated movements. Chang does this and adds some superbly composed shots to the sequence. Sadly, a few of these sections are too long. It would've been good if he'd mixed the continuities quicker. Chang's third mode is his Horror cinematography, and it's here that Chang excels. He uses the swifter cutting style he should've employed in the action sequences to ramp up the excitement. He deftly applies a cycle of rotating lights, greens and reds, to depict the evilness of the demons: This is in addition to keeping his well-honed tableaus and varying camera angles. And since some of these sections contain martial arts, they are more engaging than just the non-supernatural brawls. I doff my cap to the choreographers of those fight scenes. They are excellent and awe-inspiring. Best yet, they become more imaginative as we travel through the story.
Now we get to the dreaded cast. First, these guys are superb martial artists, which drove up my rating. However, the dubbing is woeful and it reduced the score by a few points. I can usually forgive some terrible voiceovers, as they're generally employed to add buoyancy to their picture. However, these vocals are all monotonous monotone. I've heard more life and emotion come from a computer-generated voice. And it's not just the odd one or two characters; it's all of them. This flatness has the effect of adding a surreal and disjointed feel to the movie. Though the characters show subtle and full-on emotions on-screen, their voices make them sound trite and bored with the whole affair. It's so awful that it even affected my enjoyment, which is never good.
Now, I'm not easily annoyed, but Nine Demons annoyed the hell out of me. Because of that, I can't recommend the picture to everyone, which is a shame as there are some impressive scenes. I especially liked the roping sequence, the ice-skating battle, and the gymnastic bamboo cage fracas. But then somebody speaks, and you suddenly want to join in the melee and hit somebody, like the vocal non-talent who wrecks this movie. So if you're a martial arts fight fan give it a go; you should enjoy the brawls. If you're a newbie, stay away because it wouldn't be long before you're hitting the off button. Or better yet, you can try to find a subtitled edition and not the dubbed version I watched.
Oh, Black Prince Of Darkness, I have a proposition for you. My soul for anyone who reads my IMDb lists - Absolute Horror and Obsidian Dreams to see where I rated Nine Demons.
Take Care & Stay Well.
