SONS OF THE NEON NIGHT
Feng Lin Huo Shan (Sons of the Neon Night), the gloomy thriller by Juno Mak
Twelve years after Jiangshi (Rigor Mortis), his first dark feature film, Juno Mak is back with Feng Lin Huo Shan (Sons of the Neon Night) shown in Midnight Screenings, a dark and stylistic urban thriller in the form of a sensory experience, the production of which was delayed for some time.
A multi-faceted artist, Juno Mak started his career in the music industry in 2002 as a singer before turning to cinema to start a career as an actor and film producer. In 2013, he directed his first film, Jiangshi (Rigor Mortis), an homage to Hong Kong cinema in which an old star of the big screen, assigned to vampire hunter roles, is confronted by the ghosts haunting his apartment.
In Feng Lin Huo Shan (Sons of the Neon Night) we find ourselves at the heart of a labyrinth of neon lights and dark narrow alleyways. It’s a thriller that is both stylistic and extravagant, plunging the protagonists into gloomy, icy, Hong Kong by night. The feature film starts with a huge explosion and a shootout in Causeway Bay in central Hong Kong. But we quickly realize that these two events are just a diversion to make way for an unhinged series of events orchestrated by the heir to a global pharmaceutical conglomerate hellbent on eradicating the drug trafficking that is corrupting the city.
As the plot of the film suggests, the clear aim of Feng Lin Huo Shan (Sons of the Neon Night) is to depict deep disillusionment. Juno Mak directs an existential thriller where Hong Kong and its neon lights become a cruel mirror reflecting modern loneliness. Filmed between 2017 and 2018, production of this feature film was delayed mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To make the film, a to-scale replica of Causeway Bay, the location of the film’s opening scenes, had to be constructed. The cast includes Takeshi Kaneshiro, Sean Lau, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Louis Koo and Gao Yuanyuan, who all play characters plagued by moral ambiguity and broken loyalties.
