THE SEVENTH CURSE begins with a writer narrating a tale about the adventure of Dr Chen and Wesley. The tale involves Dr Chen who gets involved in a tussle with an evil sorcerer named Aquala. Aquala, for his selfish motives, was going to sacrifice a girl named Bachu and Chen foils his plan while also desecrating the sacrificial place. In retaliation, Aquala kills all of Chen's men and puts a curse on him whereby seven bullets will pop out from inside of his body with the last bullet tearing his heart, thus killing him. Bachu temporarily puts a hold on the curse but after a year the curse returns. Now, Chen along with Black Dragon, the lover of Bachu, must race against time to save himself along with Black Dragon's tribe who are getting terrorised by Aguala's evil tribe.
From the get-go, this film never takes itself too seriously. There are evil sorcerers, strange creatures, and a literal monster who looks like a cross between the Alien and the Predator. The film doesn't shy away from violence as it contains a generous amount of blood and guts. There are sequences of a person's head getting chewed off, a person rotting from the inside out and literal children getting pressed between boulders for their blood. There are also a lot of fight sequences, a lot of which come out of nowhere, just like a lot of things in this film. The fight choreography is average at best although the Buddha statue fight sequence was interestingly filmed and nicely choreographed compared to others.
This film has a playful nature to it but it gets carried away too much sometimes. For instance, Aguala kidnaps 100 children from Black Dragon's tribe for his occult needs and The two men join forces to save those children along with a few tribal people. On the way, all of those people are killed except Chen, Black Dragon and Tsui Hung, a very irritating character who also happens to be the daughter of a millionaire as well as the cousin of Wesley. Apparently, she is also a reporter who loves taking pictures. On the way to save children, those tribal people die in increasingly brutal and gruesome fashion, and yet her top priority is to take pictures of those poor dead souls. Similarly, there is a sequence where little children are getting killed in a very violent manner, but the priority of the hour is to save Hung rather than those poor children. These types of tonal inconsistencies fill almost the entirety of this film. The stakes in this film also never particularly feel high even though literal bullets are popping through our protagonist's body. This is because it's never shown to be fairly effective. You see one of his legs literally getting burst open, but that's never mentioned again and he can use that leg perfectly, even fight without a hitch. There is also a dearth of deus ex-machinas for the progression of the plot, and because of that its 83 minutes of runtime feels like a long time.
Apart from a wacky and weird plot, everything in this film is incredibly ordinary. A lot of things happen at random and the plot has a serious lack of coherence. The film also lies you in its marketing material by implying that Cho Yun-Fat is the lead, which he isn't. He is barely on screen for 6-8 minutes in the entire film even though the film being by narrating the adventure of his character.
TSC is a bizarre mishmash of a lot of things that is tonally all over the place and never manages to take advantage of its premise, which could have turned into a lot better than this grotesque hodgepodge where few things work but most don't.
From the get-go, this film never takes itself too seriously. There are evil sorcerers, strange creatures, and a literal monster who looks like a cross between the Alien and the Predator. The film doesn't shy away from violence as it contains a generous amount of blood and guts. There are sequences of a person's head getting chewed off, a person rotting from the inside out and literal children getting pressed between boulders for their blood. There are also a lot of fight sequences, a lot of which come out of nowhere, just like a lot of things in this film. The fight choreography is average at best although the Buddha statue fight sequence was interestingly filmed and nicely choreographed compared to others.
This film has a playful nature to it but it gets carried away too much sometimes. For instance, Aguala kidnaps 100 children from Black Dragon's tribe for his occult needs and The two men join forces to save those children along with a few tribal people. On the way, all of those people are killed except Chen, Black Dragon and Tsui Hung, a very irritating character who also happens to be the daughter of a millionaire as well as the cousin of Wesley. Apparently, she is also a reporter who loves taking pictures. On the way to save children, those tribal people die in increasingly brutal and gruesome fashion, and yet her top priority is to take pictures of those poor dead souls. Similarly, there is a sequence where little children are getting killed in a very violent manner, but the priority of the hour is to save Hung rather than those poor children. These types of tonal inconsistencies fill almost the entirety of this film. The stakes in this film also never particularly feel high even though literal bullets are popping through our protagonist's body. This is because it's never shown to be fairly effective. You see one of his legs literally getting burst open, but that's never mentioned again and he can use that leg perfectly, even fight without a hitch. There is also a dearth of deus ex-machinas for the progression of the plot, and because of that its 83 minutes of runtime feels like a long time.
Apart from a wacky and weird plot, everything in this film is incredibly ordinary. A lot of things happen at random and the plot has a serious lack of coherence. The film also lies you in its marketing material by implying that Cho Yun-Fat is the lead, which he isn't. He is barely on screen for 6-8 minutes in the entire film even though the film being by narrating the adventure of his character.
TSC is a bizarre mishmash of a lot of things that is tonally all over the place and never manages to take advantage of its premise, which could have turned into a lot better than this grotesque hodgepodge where few things work but most don't.