New Blood (2002)

directed by Soi Cheang
Hong Kong
89 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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This is a horror film, but much more frightening than the blood and ghosts is the city it's set in, which almost seems like it's halfway to becoming a ghost itself, if it isn't already one. This is the kind of place where the essential spark of belonging is just absent- nobody lives there, they only reside there. 

Someone at my book club once talked about the concept of a "moral apocalypse", not in the sense that everything turns to vice and grime and "immorality", but in the sense that everybody has a mass shift in personal morals to where they just don't care anymore. New Blood depicts a place where that has happened. Almost everybody reviewing it agrees that it feels apocalyptic, but it isn't an apocalypse like Mad Max where the world is obviously broken, or one where the cause of the downfall is quantifiable as one thing- nuclear weapons, climate change, disease, &c. The city appears to be in the mid-stages of emptying out because without people, without livelihood, a city is nothing. The shadows and isolation of the city destroy the ability of individual people to connect with each other, and that lack of connection in turn destroys the city. Just ghosts, now.

The atmosphere is overwhelmingly the most affecting thing in New Blood, but outside of that, there's a story about the vengeful ghost of a suicide returning to haunt the three people who donated blood to try and save her life. This concept actually feels like it doesn't fit with the depressing atmosphere of the film, which is an indicator of just how much of a downer the atmosphere is, that even a story about a suicide feels like it should be in a more upbeat film. I guess the desire to escape is in keeping with the desolation of the city, as is the anger the ghost feels when she finds that she died, while her boyfriend, who was planning to go with her to wherever they'd go when they died, got stuck in that horrible living limbo of a city.

I think New Blood might have attempted a really tired old "blame it on mental illness" twist towards the end, but honestly, I started falling asleep and I missed some parts. As far as that twist goes, I obviously still don't like it, but this is one of the very, very few instances where I believe it was inserted deliberately, as part of the story, as opposed to being put in because the filmmakers couldn't figure out a way to end their film. It's not a sympathetic portrayal of mental illness, but it's one that at least vaguely understands the way that your environment affects your mental health. This is the kind of movie that gets made when people have no faith in the upward progression of their city anymore, believing things can only get worse and worse.