06-14-2026, 10:13 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-14-2026, 10:25 AM by Drunk Monk.)
The Thousand Faces of Dunjia 2 (2023)
This is one of those Chinese sequels that has little to do with the original - new cast, new director, all new. The only thing that makes it a sequel is that it's the continuing adventures of the Mist clan, a secret Daoist org of warriors saving the world from demons. It is far inferior to the original.
Nevertheless, it has some interesting yaoguai stuff. It's one of those 'everyone's after an ultimate power source' plots, but this time it's the Tai Sui, a Feng Shui thing that I know from translating Chinese horoscopes for a quarter century plus. Tai Sui is a god tied to Jupiter, but in the year of your zodiac, he brings you bad luck just to be annoying. The uninitiated often think that their year is lucky, meaning if you're born in the year of the horse, then the year of the horse will bring you luck - it's the complete opposite thanks to Tai Sui and a tell to see if your Chinese astrologer is full of crap. A lot of western Chinese astrologers make this mistake. Anyway, here the Tai Sui is a glob of meat off the face of a dead grandfather that is dug up by his son to heal his grandson's birth defect of blindness. It works - the kid can see after the family has dinner with the corpse to extract the Tai Sui meat glob. But it attracts the attention of the 'stinky insect demon' who kills the parents and reanimates them and the granddad to chase after the kid. It's kinda dark.
The kid is saved by the Mist clan, and they wipe his memory with a magic goldfish and then go to after the stinky insect demon. A fake fortune teller gets possessed by the Tai Sui, who talks to him in his head like a schizophrenic voice and empowers him with magic. The hawty from the Mist clan (who fights with a magic parasol) seals the Tai Sui and the fake says he'll join the Mist clan if they unseal him (a ploy by the Tai Sui that everyone see through). The Mist clan has two hawties, a bald elder that wields a magic bell, a coolie with a pig-like snout, and a puppeteer who uses a yard high puppet of Zhong Kui, the demon queller (played by a kid or a dwarf in a creepy mask).
There's a lot of artsiness that I liked in this. The demons were gross and creepy, including one six-legged winged stinky insect demon with a pale woman's head, and the Tai Sui is always sending out artery-like tentacles to encase victims. Plus there's swarms of bugs like in The Mummy. So many bugs. The use of magic was cool too like the way the bell captures demons and the parasol which can help that hawty fly like Mary Poppins and crawls about like a spider. The story has two really good twists that are heart-wrenchingly romantic unrequited love arcs, something Chinese movies can be really good at.
But overall, the film misses. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps my expectations were too high from the original. Perhaps it's a timing thing. I really need to revisit the original Miracle Fighters but I can't find it online yet.
Not D00M recommended unless you really got a hankering for some yaoguai. That's probably only me that craves it.
Seen here:
This is one of those Chinese sequels that has little to do with the original - new cast, new director, all new. The only thing that makes it a sequel is that it's the continuing adventures of the Mist clan, a secret Daoist org of warriors saving the world from demons. It is far inferior to the original.
Nevertheless, it has some interesting yaoguai stuff. It's one of those 'everyone's after an ultimate power source' plots, but this time it's the Tai Sui, a Feng Shui thing that I know from translating Chinese horoscopes for a quarter century plus. Tai Sui is a god tied to Jupiter, but in the year of your zodiac, he brings you bad luck just to be annoying. The uninitiated often think that their year is lucky, meaning if you're born in the year of the horse, then the year of the horse will bring you luck - it's the complete opposite thanks to Tai Sui and a tell to see if your Chinese astrologer is full of crap. A lot of western Chinese astrologers make this mistake. Anyway, here the Tai Sui is a glob of meat off the face of a dead grandfather that is dug up by his son to heal his grandson's birth defect of blindness. It works - the kid can see after the family has dinner with the corpse to extract the Tai Sui meat glob. But it attracts the attention of the 'stinky insect demon' who kills the parents and reanimates them and the granddad to chase after the kid. It's kinda dark.
The kid is saved by the Mist clan, and they wipe his memory with a magic goldfish and then go to after the stinky insect demon. A fake fortune teller gets possessed by the Tai Sui, who talks to him in his head like a schizophrenic voice and empowers him with magic. The hawty from the Mist clan (who fights with a magic parasol) seals the Tai Sui and the fake says he'll join the Mist clan if they unseal him (a ploy by the Tai Sui that everyone see through). The Mist clan has two hawties, a bald elder that wields a magic bell, a coolie with a pig-like snout, and a puppeteer who uses a yard high puppet of Zhong Kui, the demon queller (played by a kid or a dwarf in a creepy mask).
There's a lot of artsiness that I liked in this. The demons were gross and creepy, including one six-legged winged stinky insect demon with a pale woman's head, and the Tai Sui is always sending out artery-like tentacles to encase victims. Plus there's swarms of bugs like in The Mummy. So many bugs. The use of magic was cool too like the way the bell captures demons and the parasol which can help that hawty fly like Mary Poppins and crawls about like a spider. The story has two really good twists that are heart-wrenchingly romantic unrequited love arcs, something Chinese movies can be really good at.
But overall, the film misses. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps my expectations were too high from the original. Perhaps it's a timing thing. I really need to revisit the original Miracle Fighters but I can't find it online yet.
Not D00M recommended unless you really got a hankering for some yaoguai. That's probably only me that craves it.
Seen here:
Shadow boxing the apocalypse