3/5 stars
A zombie thriller devoid of hope and humour, Possession Street is the latest in an increasingly noticeable roster of new Hong Kong movies – including 2023’s Back Home and Yum Investigation – to centre on a once-familiar place of communal activities that has descended into horror and anarchy.
The film marks the promising feature debut of director Jack Lai Chun-lung, whose next effort is set to be the much anticipated big-budget fantasy Back to the Past, for which he shares directing duties with Warriors of Future’s Ng Yuen-fai.
In an intriguing black-and-white opening that is partly styled like a newsreel, Possession Street shows us a sensationalist episode from World War II in which several civilians who were accidentally trapped inside a bomb shelter during an air raid turn to murder and cannibalism without hesitation.
A run-down shopping centre that has seen far better days now sits on top of the site of this gruesome tragedy. On this fateful day earmarked in some ancestral scripture, vengeful spirits are unleashed from beneath the ground in the shape of orange mist that turns people into flesh-eating zombies.