[KFCC] Chinese Ghost Story 3 Review

Story: One hundred years after Chinese Ghost Story I, a monk and his student are traveling to another temple to deliver a gold buddha statue. During their travel they run into some trouble in town and decide to make haste on their journey. When night falls they come across the Orchid Temple, they decide to take refuge even tho the temple is rumored to be haunted. During the night the Master monk senses evil spirits and decides to go hunt them leaving his student to protect the Buddha statue. While the master is gone a ghost visits the young student and tries to seduce him. She fails to have an effect on him and he scares her away with his prayers. During the events with the ghost the young student broke the Buddha statue, to avoid the wrath of his master he says he is ill to buy some time to try to repair the statue. In the coming days the Ghost and the student become friends but disaster strikes and the master monk falls into danger. The student hires a traveling mystic warrior (Jacky Cheung) to help him rescue his master.

Review: This movie follows in the footsteps of the Chinese Ghost Story style of movie, the look and feel is very similar. The story has no links with the previous films other than the Tree Devil from the first movie. In our opinion it seems they tried to recapture the feeling of the first movie, with the seduction by spirits and the friendship between ghost and mortal. The story is good but it basically a different variant of the first one.

There are not many main characters in this movie which is good in the sense you don't get too confused. The story mainly focuses on the young student monk named Fong and the ghost named Lotus. The master monk and the mystic warrior are interesting characters but they have less of a main role, they are more there to fight. As for the villains you have the Tree Devil and Lotus's sister Butterfly, they are like the evil spirits from the first film. In general the characters are very much like the first ghost story.

The action scenes in this movie are very much like the previous Ghost Stories and the special effects are a bit improved in quality. The action scenes were well spread out in the movie but it was not the main focus, there wasn't as much action as in the previous films. You had 2 main combat styles the old monk and the mystic warrior, the warrior was pretty much like in the other movies but for the old monk that was something a little different and was nice too see. All in all the action scenes were good the only negative side is that there were not that many.

The subtitles on the Universal version were ok, luckily this movie passes mostly at night so you avoid the white on white problem. If you enjoyed Chinese Ghost Story 1 you will like this one as the story and characters are very similar. Its almost like a different version of that movie. For those out there looking for action you will be a bit disappointed as there is much less action in this movie, it is more concentrated on dialog and events. In general we find it a nice movie.