(The) Devil’s Box (1984)

Original title: 鬼戰

Warning: there will be spoilers for the film’s resolution!

Commercial director Tong (Simon Yam Tat-Wah) is not terribly happy with his life, because he’s doubting the moral and artistic merits of the ad hawking biz. Much to the chagrin of his boss (Edwin Tsui Yuk-Wan), Tong finds so little joy in what his work is actually about, he’s shooting his ads as weird little short films in which the product he’s supposed to sell might have a three second guest stint.

Things become less existentially depressing and more supernaturally dangerous for our protagonist when he’s doing a location shot in some old, rather impressive looking empty building. Tong orders his crew to drag away a heap of garbage which includes a large chest secured with Buddhist amulets. The first guy to touch the chest is dangerously wounded by a fall in the very next scene. He isn’t the last victim of whatever supernatural force has been accidentally unleashed, though. Suicides and strange deaths surround Tong’s agency now, and Tong himself is haunted by threatening and dangerous dreams that seem to foresee various deaths. And that’s before he learns he’s suddenly suffering from a brain tumour.

Apparently, Tommy Chin Ming-Cheung’s Devil’s Box was shot some time around 1984 and shelved until 1991. It’s a bit of a shame, really, for this is such an atypical entry into Hongkong horror, it would have been interesting to see its influence on its actual contemporaries in the 80s – or rather, if it would have had one. Typically, HK horror is either nasty and brutal in the CATIII manner, or a bit goofy, energetic and surreal. Devil’s Box really doesn’t fall under any of these descriptions, and is rather an attempt at ambiguous horror, where the audience becomes increasingly unsure how much of what we see are the delusions of our main character and how much of it is real.

Even the movie’s ending doesn’t make things completely clear: did Tong commit all of the murders, or did the supernatural force take on his shape and act out his resentments and personal troubles? Or is Tong’s existential crisis the supernatural force, and he’s rather more aggressively doing what his painter buddy and friend in artsy existentialism does when he burns all of his pictures? The film isn’t telling, and it’s good enough at being ambiguous to get away with it instead of being frustrating.

In part, this works because Yam – looking incredibly young – is rather great at embodying this ambiguity and suggests Tong as a man who knows all of his frustrations but doesn’t seem to know why they are there or how to cope with them productively at all. Yam being Yam, he does so looking pretty as well.

Devil Box’s other big ace in the hole is Chin’s direction. There’s liberal use of the expected blue lighting and dry ice fog, dreamily slow camera movements to secure the proper air of unreal. Chin also demonstrates a productive eye for a kind of mild surrealism that fits the character going through it excellently – of course Tong is the kind of guy whose visions would show him the death of a friend on a television screen. Another character killing himself (or is he?) with a roll of film makes perfect sense in a metaphorical space centred around a film director as well. All of this creates a dreamy flow and vibe, yet one that feels clearly and surprisingly straightforwardly connected to the film’s central ambiguities surrounding Tong’s personal crisis.

It’s not at all the thing I usually expect from old Hong Kong horror, so Devil’s Box has turned out to be a bit of a surprise; even more so because the film is not just doing something uncommon for its time and place, but doing it rather well and thoughtful.