The Legend of the Cat Demon (2024)

The Legend of the Cat Demon

China has the second largest film industry in the world. Their box office numbers are right behind those of the United States, but very few wide-release Chinese films make it stateside.

One movie that did well in China, making $84 million in the country alone, is “Legend of the Demon Cat,” which opens at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center this Friday.

The story of “Legend of the Demon Cat” is pretty much summed up by its title. Based on a novel called “Samana Kukai,” this movie takes place during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). A demon cat appears and begins terrorizing Chang’an, a peaceful city. The Chinese dynasty asks a poet named Bai Letian for help, as well as a Japanese monk named Kukai. The two travel around Chang’an to figure out why this demon cat is haunting the city and what it wants.

The execution of “Legend of the Demon Cat” can be spotty and its story can get overly convoluted at times, but there’s something about it that just works.

The beginning feels weird.

A woman sits alone in her home when she is visited by a demon cat. This computer-generated black cat stalks her and her house while telepathically communicating with her. He asks to be fed fish eyes and promises payment payment which ends up being cursed, as most things are when they come from demon cats. This curse causes most of what happens next in this movie; after cursing this woman’s family for generations, he starts visiting prominent members of society more frequently and killing them.

But even though it’s no bigger than your average housecat it’s legitimately terrifying.

Whether it be through how stealthily it sneaks around its prey or its menacing voice (provided by Matt Fowler), whenever we see that cat on screen we’re put on edge. We never know what’s going to happen next. Sometimes it murders entire rooms full of people, sometimes it just gives a chilling warning. It’s unpredictable, but calculated. You can almost see the cat thinking as it decided what to do next (yes, even though it’s created digitally). It’s extremely smart, which makes it even scarier.

Though sometimes the visual effects distract from the scary parts.

There are a few moments where the visual effects are incredible, but those were balanced out with moments where they felt like something out of a PlayStation 2 video game. They get the point across, but they’re not convincing.

But where “Legend of the Demon Cat” struggles most is in its second half.

A great deal of the second part of this movie is an information dump and flashbacks. Although the material is interesting for the most part, there’s so much of it thrown at us at once that it becomes impossible to keep up with. Moreover, from its flashbacks and dream sequences, what’s real vs what isn’t gets even more confusing through the film.

There’s a good quarter or so at the end of this movie where I don’t even know what’s happening anymore. It explains the demon cat’s backstory, but it doesn’t make any sense and goes on too many tangents which is a shame because there’s good stuff in there, it’s just not connected very well.

But it’s those good things that keep “Legend of the Demon Cat” alive.

The base story about the demon cat being overly dramatic and complex as it often is still incredibly compelling, and the motivations of the demon cat itself deliver an unexpectedly powerful message about letting go of one’s past. I won’t lie: it doesn’t always make sense. But every frame demands your attention even when you can’t follow along with every twist and turn.

This is a movie that grows on you after you see it. The story itself is interesting enough to justify a trip to the theater, although poorly executed at times like this one was. In fact, watching “Legend of the Demon Cat” wasn’t dissimilar from hearing someone say “demon cat” for me anyway I thought that sounds dumb until I saw what it did next!

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