he also feels guilt over Tim’s parents’ death. Here he’s the gruff guy who doesn’t seem to like Tim much at first but it turns out all his harsh methods were secretly training Tim in skills. Vampire alum as he was in part 3!) He’s not the only veteran running around, Chin Siu-Ho, who plays Tim’s mentor character Yip Chi-Chan, was also in the original Mr. Good things include Richard Ng Yiu-Hon (a Mr. He’s briefly mentioned as being one of the most powerful types of vampires, but that doesn’t translate well to the screen, and the only other time different vampire types are mentioned is to explain Summer’s behavior.
The vampire lord villain isn’t in enough of the film to be a constant threat and is completely unmemorable as a final boss, he’s just a bigger vampire with no real personality or threat beyond being larger. The horror aspects are fitting for what a horror comedy would be, but a lot of the comedy doesn’t come together correctly outside of the romantic scenes with Tim and the Summer, which means a lot of what should have been romantic scenes are instead comedic. The amount of vampire attacks this results in also exacerbates the department’s feud with the local police who attempt to take control of their group just as bad stuff is about to go down.ĭespite having promise and some good scenes, Vampire Cleanup Department tries to be three different kinds of films and the lack of focus just weakens the whole structure. Summer was buried alive as a sacrifice for an evil local landlord, who also was resurrected as a vampire and is now loose in the city searching for her. Tim hides her away at his house from the rest of the squad, who would kill her on sight. She also develops a vampire crush on him, following him around. As the new guy he gets all the garbage details including cleaning up the office via constant sweeping and also memorizing and making the different vampire amulets (the strips of paper with writing on them that the priests put on vampire heads to freeze them or control them.) This framework lets them follow the traditional hero’s journey arc, except with some extra films stuffed along for the ride.ĭue to Tim’s magical powers, a female vampire named Summer (Lin Min-Chen, a social media star known for holding weird objects and showing her abs, neither of which her character does here!) absorbs some of his life energy and starts transforming more human. This makes him a legacy hire but also means he’s got some vampire immunity that is explained just well enough when needed for plot purposes.
It helps that he is the son of two former members who were killed while on duty, his mother’s last act was giving birth to him after a vampire attack. We follow Tim Cheung (BabyJohn Choi Hon-Yik) as he moves from hapless schlub to member of the Vampire Cleanup Department. The squad takes down vampires when they pop up, and since this is a Hong Kong film they are of the hopping variety. Vampire flicks, except imagine if the one-eyebrowed priest was employed by the Hong Kong government in a secret department. Unfortunately it is one of those middle of the road flicks that are hard to write about, due to me not wanting to slam it too hard due to the parts that were good, but not wanting to praise it to the heavens due to the parts that were bad. SFFilm had their annual Hong Kong Film Festival and due to the power of having two tickets leftover from the last festival I went to see two films in this festival! This time, all the films were at the fabulous Vogue Theater, which is a bit of a headache for me to get to but at least parking around there isn’t terrible (also a skunk sprayed my car as thanks for me stopping in time to not hit him as he ran across the road, lol!) While my car now stank, Vampire Cleanup Department did not, but it wasn’t a new paradigm in Hong Kong horror comedy, either. Written by Yan Pak-Wing, Ho Wing-Hong, and Ashley Cheung Yin-Keiĭirected by Chiu Sin-Hang and Yan Pak-Wing Vampire Cleanup Department (Review) Vampire Cleanup Department
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