Yin Chek Ha shows up to rout the other evil spirits, but the presence of the amnesiac Siu Sin causes his face to contort with great emotional pain (Louis Koo calls this “acting”). Tasked with finding water for a drought-suffering village (led by Hong Kong Cinema veteran Tsui Kam-Kong), Ning heads into the mountains where he meets Siu Sin in a loving slow motion shot stolen straight from the 1987 film.
Siu Sin is freed back into the forest while the tortured Yin continues in his quest to bring down the evil 10,000 year-old Tree Demon (Wai Ying-Hung).Ĭue the beginning of the 1987 Chinese Ghost Story, with the arrival of Ning Choi-Shan. The film opens with Yin and Siu Sin falling in love before duty impels Yin to remove Siu Sin’s memory. Previously, Yin Chek Ha was played by a unibrow-sporting Wu Ma, but here he’s embodied by the much hunkier Louis Koo. Yip’s new version modifies the love story between klutzy scholar Ning Choi-Shan (Yu Shaoqun) and forest spirit Siu Sin (Liu Yifei, playing a fox demon and not a ghost, as SARFT would require), creating a love triangle between those two and ghostbusting Taoist monk Yin Chek Ha. Unless you’re completely cinema illiterate, you should know that Wilson Yip’s 2011 fantasy adventure A Chinese Ghost Story (called A Chinese Fairy Tale in mainland China) is a remake of the 1987 Ching Siu-Tung classic A Chinese Ghost Story. Really, putting together a satisfactory remake of A Chinese Story was probably an impossible proposition. Wilson Yip's remake of the 1987 Chinese Ghost Story is OK for big budget audience fare, but it's impossible to forget that the original film exists and was also a whole lot better. Louis Koo Tin-Lok, Crystal Liu Yifei, Yu Shaoqun, Kara Hui Ying-Hung, Louis Fan Siu-Wong, Wang Danyi Li, Gong Xinliang, Lin Peng, Li Jing, Tsui Kam-Kong, Fung Hak-On
Yuk-Sing, Alan Chui Chung-San, Fan Chin-Hung
Liu Yifei and Yu Shaoqun make like Joey and Leslie in A Chinese Ghost Story.