That Demon Within

Pulp done with passion can be its own reward, as the veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Dante Lam shows with his feverish cop thriller That Demon Within.

Lam’s darkest work to date, one where violence is not just graphic but ugly, and Hong Kong symbolically comes to resemble a charnel house.

Lam’s filmmaking team deliver thrills on schedule with solid effects, crisp shooting and fast cutting.

Not unlike most of its Hollywood counterparts, though, this Hong Kong import can't resist the urge to dumb down a fascinating premise for the sake of mass consumption.

Rock-dumb Hong Kong thriller That Demon Within is exhausting, and only sometimes batshit enough to be engaging.

There’s a half-realized, half-haunting Hitchcockian psychodrama buried somewhere within That Demon Within. What’s on the surface plays more like Wong and Lam simply forgot to take their meds.

It rarely feels like anything more than an effort to pander to the kind of audiences that enjoy Quentin Tarantino's films for all the wrong reasons.