Movies
From time to time, the Chinese streamers try to abandon the fantasy/martial arts genre in order to diversify their offerings. The Forbidden Depths is an adventure film with fantasy and action elements, a tricky genre to coin without a hefty budget. It's obvious the routine is lacking to make this a proper genre effort, but it is nice to get something different for a change. A young boy from the Tanka Tribe has to dive up treasure as a coming of age ritual. During the dive he finds a peculiar golden plate. When he pries it loose, a giant sea monster appears and his struggle with the monster separates the boy from his clan and lands him in the hands of pirates. There he meets a girl who is also looking for the Underground City. Too much green screen moments and bad CG hamper this film's appeal. The setup is pretty fun, the pacing and runtime are perfect and the film does end up feeling pretty adventurous, but the grandeur of the genre remains forever out of reach. Not terrible, but I don't think we'll see too many similar films in the near future.Read all