I wasn’t expecting 2026 to be the year for noted Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou, director of ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ and ‘Hero’ (among many other films), to release a slick spy thriller. That said, his recent efforts haven’t had the international attention of previous hits so watching ‘Scare Out’ was an intriguing return to Yimou’s work.
A relatively simple operation to observe and intercept the sale of Chinese secrets to an unknown buyer turns to chaos and the death of an operative. The buyer is severely wounded and brought into custody and while they wait for him to recover enough to be interrogated, an investigation begins as to what went wrong. It is soon discovered that a double agent has infiltrated the team and the race is on to find out who is leaking the information. As the investigation intensifies, the relationship and dynamic between the operatives is put under considerable strain.
‘Scare Out’, a film saddled with a rotten title, starts in exactly the way every spy thriller of the last thirty years seems to have: sped-up shots, febrile editing, swooping camera shots, slowed-down shots, tinny, urgent music nudging you to think ‘excitement’ – all of the tropes expected of the genre. It worked well in ‘Enemy of the State’, but it’s getting a little overused now and I let out a heavy sigh when I thought that Yimou was going down this very familiar route.
Thankfully, ‘Scare Out’ outgrows its gimmicks and builds into an interesting espionage thriller that threatens to be better than it eventually proves to be. Once the drone shots of glitzy Shenzhen skyscrapers subside, the human intrigue begins and this is where Yimou comes into his own, allowing dialogue to take over from the desperate need to excite. The tension is so much more palpable during the investigations and helps set the tone for later action set-pieces; the temptation to fill the story with action is avoided and ‘Scare Out’ becomes a much more inviting proposition. Not that there is anything wrong with action of course, but it only hits the spot when the story has earned it and ‘Scare Out’ just about manages to.
Like all spy thrillers, ‘Scare Out’ is packed with double-crosses and triple-agents though the build-up to their discovery is handled better than the actual revelation. The device that everyone is fighting over is a typical MacGuffin, though this hardly matters when the story starts gaining momentum. Viewers in the West might find a certain irony in a film about Chinese forces stopping industrial espionage by Western powers given the accusations about this being very much the other way around in real life, yet as a thriller it mostly works. Once Yimou gives in to his instinct to let the characters take centre stage and forgo the clichéd audiovisual tricks, ‘Scare Out’ entertains.
Trinity CineAsia are bringing ‘Scare Out’ to UK and Irish cinemas on February 20. For full details and screening locations, visit trinitycineasia.com.
