Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe
2015; directed by Lu Chuan

Mainland director Lu Chuan is best known more for arthouse fare such as City of Life and Death, but with Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe, he steers towards more of a mainstream audience with an adaptation of the popular novel Ghost Blows Out the Light, which was also recently adapted to the screen via another Mainland release, Mojin: The Lost Legend.

The content and execution here is a little similar to the Mummy films, with a group of explorers stumbling on a mysterious temple. Running the tried and true cinematic playbook for movies like this, they shouldn't mess around with the temple, but they do, and unleash powerful monsters that kill everyone besides one lone survivor who then hides away, trying to forget the past, until tales of demons wreaking havoc on a small town call him to action.

Mainland government censors are often harsh on fantasy content, so the work-around here is emblazoning a title card proclaiming the events are NOT based on a true story (really? shocking!) and then using aliens as the cause of the disturbance, rather than demons or ghosts, though both demons and ghosts are mentioned constantly throughout the movie. Oy vey. This makes the story more complex and hard to decipher than it really needs to be, not to mention the usual bloated Mainland "epic" picture running time not helping matters any. Thankfully, it's not quite as bad as usual, clocking in at just a hair under two hours, but frankly there is a lot of fat that could have been trimmed from the middle hour of the film, as the pace slows down considerably.

When Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe concentrates on solely delivering eye candy, it is successful for the most part. The film is bookended by a couple of very impressive set pieces, with special effects completed by veterans of Peter Jackson's Weta team, the people behind such visually stunning movies as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. While still a step back from big-budget Hollywood productions in terms of visual bombast, Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe still delivers enough thrills (albeit in a brain-dead manner) to warrant a recommendation as a fun summertime "popcorn" movie.

RATING: 6

Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe has been released uncut and in the original Mandarin language in North America by Well Go USA. It is available on VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray from Amazon. Extras on the disc-based versions include a behind the scenes featurette and trailers for the movie and other Well Go releases.