First, I have to comment on the bad translation in the title from Chinese to English. Snow girl they wrote but it was more snow demoness than anything. The settings are so full of CGI graphics, from the sceneries to the demons that were reminiscent of western movies like the Lord of the Rings. Gone are the forms of the spirits, demons and demoness (妖) that one often reads about and imagines in the chinese novels and watched in movies in earlier decades.
One of the uniqueness of different cultures lie in their different interpretation and depiction of all common things including gods, deities, spirits, demons etc and the influence of western culture on chinese movie-making couldn't be more apparent in chinese movies of late. Food is one big area where the melting pot of eastern and western cultures create a slew of fusion cuisine where the original flavour of food worldwide is starting to taste similar. This is now happening to movies in the east and in my opinion, this is a regression of chinese movie-making and I am absolutely against it.
The movie focused on the story of the legendary demon-hunter 钟馗 in chinese fictional novels and how he met and fell in love with the snow demoness. Like many other storylines before this e.g. Madam White Snake, it told the tale of how a mortal and a demoness became hopelessly in love that not even all forces on the realms of heaven, earth and hell could tear them apart. With the help of their sister(s), the demoness went all out to sacrifice herself to save her man.
Chen Kun once again took on dual roles, where one was an androgynous demon and the other as the heavily bearded demon hunter who became part demon part human. Li Bingbing looked more like a bride in some scenes and it was so obvious that so much technical touch-up was done on her visibly aged face to make her look youthful, radiant and ethereal. Winston Chao looked more bloated than before too and his portrayal of a two-faced deity was quite comical.
So in all honesty, I didn't quite enjoy this movie.
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| Chen Kun as 钟馗 |
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| Li Bingbing as the bride, I mean Snow Demoness |
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| the first encounter between the leads |
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| Winston Chao, the prententious deity |
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| sisters of the demonic world unite |
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| the demon looked straight out from Lord of the Rings |
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| a transformed half demon half human 钟馗 |
