Director – Liu Binjie, Action Director – Xin Chao, Screenplay – Xiao Ye, Producers – Du Jian, Wang Lingling, Wang Rui & Wang Zhi, Photography – Sha Yong, Music – Hu Xiaoyang, Lian Yina, Wu Wei & Zhou Chen, Visual Effects Supervisor – Luo Chao, Visual Effects Supervisor – Tang Ning, Visual Effects – Film Trees Studio & Neverland (Supervisors – Li Hulin & Lu Hengzhu), Makeup Effects – Apocalypse Sky TV Special Makeup, Art Direction – Zhao Yang. Production Company – Beijing Rock Candy Film Co., Ltd..
Cast
Miu Qimiya (Wu Qingqing), Li Mingxuan (Zhou Yang), Liu Beige (Li Yongshun), Cui Zhenzhen (Cui Youxi), Zeng Yan (Angela), Shang Na (Catherine), Hu Qingyun (Aunt Mei), Deng Haowen (Wang Changyun), Mou Fengbin (Lu Hai), Wang Tao (Wang Gang)
Plot
The year 2077. Wu Qingqing is an agent who has been sent on an undercover mission into a hospital in Korea run by the Medusa Corporation. Medusa has been conducting illegal experiments in producing mutants for gladiatorial combat competitions. Qingqing has been captured and is injected with a serum that will transform her into one of the mutants. An armed team is sent in to retrieve Qingqing and appropriate the chip containing the data, but all are slaughtered as Medusa activates mutants to attack. Only Qingqing gets away after discovering the vast combat powers the serum has given her. She is found and taken in by the police officer Zhou Yang. Medusa head Li Yongshun sends other mutants and armed teams to recapture her.
The Chinese science-fiction did not exist for many years but seems to have made a sudden explosion onto screens from the late 2010s onwards. This period has included works such as Gone with the Night (2019), Shanghai Fortress (2019), The Wandering Earth (2019) and sequel, Restart the Earth (2021), The Underground War (2021), VR Fighter (2021), Moon Man (2022) and the tv series The Three-Body Problem (2023- ).
Most of the abovementioned draw on Western models like the Michael Bay spectacular and the modern SF action film. The surprise about Mutant Ghost Wargirl is how different it is to any of these. It borrows a standard Cyberpunk setting, something we have never seen in Chinese cinema before. The battles between the various mutants are clearly modelled on the ones that take place with regularity in the Superhero Film, a genre that has not appeared in China yet. Even the image of Shang Na stripping down and going into action in bondage gear is a familiar one in the West but seems far more sexualised in contrast to the usually conservative portrayal of women on Chinese screens.
Zeng Yan goes into action
Liu Binjie and his action director Xin Chao do fairly well with the action scenes. Mutant Ghost Wargirl holds your interest with the scenes with various combatants beating one another up in power punches across a building site, or with Miu Qimiya’s teleportation abilities and Cui Zhenzhen manifesting an arm made of rock. It is not something that is ever going to give the MCU sleepless nights but the film holds its own fairly well in this department.
The action moves okay. The design team do a passable job at creating a textured Cyberpunk world. The only major issue is that the plot is not always an easy one to follow with the number of factions running around and doubletalk thrown around about serums, mutants and genetic experiments, which you feel needed more explanation. Not to mention more detail given about the future where the mutants are placed into gladiatorial combat of which we see nothing. Into the bargain everything comes packed into a brief 71 minute runtime.
Mutant Ghost Wargirl was the second film for Chinese director Liu Binjie who had previously made the fantasy film Luban Four Heroes (2021).
