It’s Magic
Josie Ho put her money where her mouth is, teamed up with the Pang Brothers and bettered ‘Onpaku’. Not hard.
The Mage
Director: Danny Pang, Oxide Pang • Writers: Danny Pang, Oxide Pang
Starring: Josie Ho, Carlos Chan, German Cheung, Iman Taheri
Hong Kong • 1hr 37mins
Opens Hong Kong October 8 • IIB
Grade: B-
It’s not something anyone needs to know if you’re not an industry wonk, but last year actor-producer and co-founder of the proudly named 852 Films Josie Ho Chiu-yee took to a stage at a launch event at industry shindig Filmart to talk about the slate of films 852 had planned for the coming few years. I’ll be honest and admit there were more than a few giggles in the audience, particularly give that 1) a proof-of-concept trailer is not the same thing as a finished film and 2) almost all the trailers prominently featured a dude called Iman Taheri – which rumour held was a doctor (Ho’s husband Conroy Chan’s doctor) that now wanted to be a movie star? Ho was pushing hard to make him happen too. Not many in the crowd thought much of it.
Flash forward to… now and here comes one of those proofs-of-concept made real. The Mage | 拾荒法師 stars Ho and Taheri (okay, he has a minor role) in the latest from Asia’s reigning kings of sibling horror, Danny Pang Fat and Oxide Pang Chun, still best know for The Eye (2002) and Re-cycle (2006). Now, you have to understand my terror at the idea of a Josie Ho horror flick in the wake of the ongoing trauma wrought by Onpaku. But much to my surprise (and relief, and if I’m honest, disappointment) The Mage isn’t entirely awful. Familiar? Yes. Choppy? Sure. Frequently unfathomable? Of course. But the Pang Brothers have a firm enough handle on horror tricks and tropes that they manage to wring maximum Hong Kong ghost horror out of the material, throw in some decent action and, hold on to your shorts, make Josie Ho kind of funny. Intentionally.
She stinks… but not like that
The Mage marries cop procedural and folk/supernatural horror in a genre mash-up that’s been serving horror filmmakers well for years, in everything from Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing to last month’s Phi Phong: The Blood Demon, to the slew of Indonesian chillers that are just pouring out of the industry there right now. Shamans are hot, baby. Here in Hong Kong, Lan Pui-ching (Ho), is a filthy, stinky mage that has a phobia about water (hence the filthy stinky) after a fortune telling went terribly wrong and a teen girl (Sabrina Ng Ping) would up dead 13 years earlier. Still feeling guilty, Lan has been trying to make amend ever since by helping shuttle those not resting in peace to the next life. She lands on police detective Wong Ming’s (a horribly miscast Carlos Chan Ka-lok) radar when she starts turning up a the scenes of a string of gruesome murders. Initially the prime suspect, Wong eventually starts working with Lan to untangle the mystic clues against his squad and his superintendent’s (Taheri) better judgement. Lan is filthy and stinky, but she’s not wrong about a powerful, unseen force being behind the murders. They just have to prove it and stop the killer.
The Mage plays out pretty much as you would expect for this kind of faith and magic versus science and evidence crime-buster thriller, and along the way there are deep dark secrets that must be reconciled, broken souls must forgive themselves and non-believers must be made to believe. Then German Cheung Man-kit shows up for a final throwdown as a rival mage. It’s all very predictable but it clips along a decent pace and has some respectable fights courtesy of Cheung. The Pangs make great use of Hong Kong’s squalid hidden corners, cramped quarters (Lan’s flat is a moody production design wonder) and dank stairwells, and do their level best to emulate Se7en, or maybe Limbo, for grotty crime scenes. Most refreshingly they give Ho an endearingly snarky edge that’s so low-key it’s almost invisible. When you figure it out, when it clicks (Ho’s super-deadpan, though some would argue “bad” and two things can be true at once) the realisation of what she’s doing suddenly injects with a level of charm it wouldn’t otherwise have. Lan’s constant shading of Wong on his garbage detective skills is a highlight. And it’s a good thing it’s there, because while Chan is out of place – this guy is far from grizzled, which the character demands – Taheri is simply embarrassing. Credit to him, I guess, for the sheer volume of hand acting and indicating “We are police!” he puts into the performance. The Mage is rote and forgettable, but it’s not disaster, which is where the disappointing aspect comes from. We all wanted a so good it’s bad laugh. We’ll get another chance, because according to the IMDb The Mage 2 is currently in post-production. And Taheri’s front and centre. Who’s laughing now?