Military general Wang Chen (Chen Kun) encounters a beautiful maiden, Xiaowei (Zhao Xun), during a raid on a rival’s camp. Believing her to be held against her will, Wang whisks her off to his compound where he instals her among his household’s servants. Little does he know that Xiaowei is really a carnivorous demon who feasts on the hearts of men to maintain the youthful painted skin that conceals her true identity. Unsurprisingly, her presence does not sit well with Wang’s wife, Peirong (Zhao Wei), but Wang insists he is merely doing a good deed, and so Xiaowei stays. However, when Wang’s brother-in-arms Pang Yong (Donnie Yen) collapses at his doorstep after two years in the wilderness, and dead bodies with their hearts torn out start appearing around the camp, fear that supernatural forces are to blame spreads.

Painted Skin is based, albeit very loosely, on a short story from 17th-century writer Pu Songling’s seminal anthology Strange Stories From A Chinese Studio. This supernatural tale was previously brought to the big screen by King Hu, director of such martial arts classics as Come Drink With Me and A Touch of Zen. This time around, the intention was certainly to produce an all-new kung fu classic, not least by casting Donnie Yen in the lead role of deserter-turned-demon-queller Pang Yong. Wilson Yip (Yen’s collaborator in recent beat-’em-ups SPL and Flash Point) is also on board as one of the film’s producers, with directorial duties going to Gordon Chan, whose Fist of Legend is regarded as one of Jet Li’s finest onscreen outings. The cast is rounded out with such accomplished Mainland stars as Zhou Xun playing the seductive otherworldly creature at the centre of this dark tale, and Zhao Wei, fresh from starring alongside Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro in John Woo’s Red Cliff.

Suffice it to say that, on paper at least, Painted Skin should be one of the more notable, and certainly successful, films of the year. What is surprising, then, is how unashamedly the film plants its feet firmly in the B-movie category, playing to well-worn horror clichés rather than aspiring to be either a period epic or a martial-arts showcase. That is not to say that Painted Skin is not without its charm. In fact, the film’s willingness to embrace its generic roots is one of its most enjoyable aspects, if only because the whole experience feels so nostalgic. It has been a while since a film like this has arrived in Hong Kong, free of the pretensions of so many recent period epics or the overbearing earnestness of Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet.

The film that springs most readily to mind when looking for favourable comparison is Tsui Hark’s Seven Swords, which also gleefully emulated the local industry’s past successes. But in much the same way that Tsui’s film diluted its own good intentions with excess, so too Painted Skin feels bloated, even with a running time of around 100 minutes.

When it works, Painted Skin is lots of fun – Zhao Xun is only too believable as the porcelain-faced demon, her delicate disposition and milky white complexion proving irresistible to those who should be hunting her down. Donnie Yen, on the other hand, seems to struggle with a script that shies away from his notorious strengths as a fighter, handing him instead a role that is both comic and noble and demands more real acting from him than perhaps he can handle. The fight scenes are dominated by fantastical wirework and CGI effects and, rather regrettably, restrain Yen from displaying what he does best.

After a thematically muddled opening act, and a flabby middle, a shift into gear in the final half hour does a fine job of rescuing a film that would otherwise be deemed a failure. The love triangle between Wang Chen, Peirong and Xiaowei is finally exploited to its full melodramatic potential and Pang Yong and Xia Bing, who disappear for a lengthy period in the middle of the film, step up for a final showdown against their demonic adversaries.

The result is a messy film, but admittedly a rather enjoyable one. It by no means fulfills its full potential but, with a knowingly referential nod to the supernatural action flicks of yesteryear, Painted Skin bizarrely feels like a breath of fresh air amidst Chinese cinema’s current crop of stale period action films.

James Marsh