It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It's not a horror movie although the concepts of having a demon that requires a steady diet of human hearts in order to keep it's fake skin looking fresh could be horrific if filmed the right way.It could be a love triangle story as it shows the internal conflict of a man who loves his wife dearly but is intrigued by the new young lady who's entered into his life.There's some interesting characters - Donnie Yen who's unrequited love comes back to request his assistance in solving the murder mysteries to which she has a prime suspect.There's the wife who's torn between fear of the demon, jealousy of her husband's attraction to the new lady in the house, and her complicated respect but not quite love for Donnie's character.In the end, it's not about the mystery of the killings as it is all readily shown on screen who is the demon, who is not. It's more an interesting play between characters and how they interact with each other and what the real meaning of love and sacrifice is. And yet, with the horror elements in play, you cannot really take the 'love-story' part of it all that seriously and in the end you're left confused over just what it is you watched.Undeniably the costumes, settings, and direction are all very well done. And at the end of it I was entertained, albeit a little confused.7/10

"Painted Skin" draws you in with it's recognizable list of performers (Vicki Zhao, Xun Zhao, Donnie Yen) and gives off an air of mystique with its movie posters and unique storyline. Loosely based on the classic Chinese short story "Strange Stories From A Chinese Studio, "Painted Skin" revolves around a female demon that feeds off of human hearts to retain its human like skin. The movie takes liberty to add several of its own plot twists, the major one being a Gothic love triangle of sorts with the demon's desire to win the heart of General Wang and take the place of his wife. Ending gets pretty emotional. There is no vampires in the movie and it isn't a gory horror flick. It's one of the best Asian flicks I seen! In other words, "Painted Skin" is light years better than "An Empress and the Warriors" and proudly untypical from the flood of Chinese epic period pieces we have seen this year. One of China's most versatile actresses, Zhou is good at switching between Xiao Wei's evil and goody-goody sides. The characters are quite engaging, the acting is solid, and the action is exciting. Better yet, the fighting scenes doesn't go on and on for a million light years as with most Asian films. The mood shifts, dancing around between drama, fantasy, demonic, and melodramatic romance. Very entertaining and mesmerizing! I couldn't get enough and started to watch it again and again. I'm glad I ignored bad reviews and took a chance on this! It's definitely not one to be missed by lovers of Asian films!

After all the effort of building international reputation with films like "Heroes" and "Crouching Tiger", Chinese film has gone back to the starting point with this one. "Painted Skin" is nothing but an amateur attempt trying to imitate other ones, without sufficient skill or patient. The lines are simple AWFUL!!! I wonder whether they came up with the script in two days. The costumes and makeup is a joke, look like recycled from other movies. The acting....Donnie Yen's performance is probably OK for a HongKong TV show and nothing else, and all those supposedly emotional scenes are so badly handled, gave me goose bumps. The worst thing of this film is the directing, the editing and camera works. It is absolutely mind-blowing that such a horrible production, worse than an average video on Youtube, has spent so much money on advertising and publicity stunt, but nothing on making this movie worth seeing.

This movie is not a horror, monster or romance movie. It reflects very well social panic today in China: third leg in marriage. Almost all Chinese females start to discuss about this fiercely online after watching the movie. There wasn't much horror at least in my opinion, but mainly complicated relationships.Background: Traditionally Chinese men could have one wife and several concubines (with lower social position than the wife). Communist government made up law of one-wife-only since 1949. However, when China started to get rich, underground lovers start to emerge again and this trend is growing stronger each day since the last 15 years.Story and implication: The movie almost directly indicates this social phenomenon: The General indicates a powerful and rich man, his wife represents the Chinese traditional image of wife (she lives for her husband and is very tolerant until the last moment, but still would sacrifice herself for the husband's good). The fox woman and the lizard man are at lower social positions because they are monsters (just how the rich and powerful Chinese see the lower social class). They are highly skilled people though (we can consider them as freshly graduated university students). Just like many Chinese women struggling in the lower social class (in reality can be a nightclub waitress, erotic massager and so on), the fox woman met the General and gave him a "beautiful, weak, needs protection" impression. On the other hand, the lizard man was ignored by society (he was invisible sometimes in the movie), just as many male in the lower social level.The General let the fox woman into his private life, giving her many privileges that only wife can enjoy (having maids, managing daily stuff at home, can even take over the wife's order, see the dinner scene when the wife was late). The only thing that he has not given her is sex-of course in reality the powerful man must have had sex with this third leg in marriage. The fox woman, given so many indications, believed that she could take over the position of wife (social position up-climb), rather than just becoming concubine.However, ex-lover of the wife, and social order keeper (the joker-alike woman) showed up. In reality, there would not be ex-lover, but family and other supporters of the wife (possibly also powerful, like indicated in the movie), and social order keeper can be the public, mass media etc. Social order keeper seemed useless at the beginning in front of the General, which clearly shows today's society power in China. Supporter of the wife could not help much because the wife's own decision determines all.Lizard man's existence was considered redundant by many who could not read the social background of China. Lizard man is skilled but still helpless, struggles alone and loyal to the woman he loves, who only look up to power and money. This indicates a serious social problem in China: imbalanced male-female ratio causes many men with lower social-position to be left out in marriage, while richer and more powerful men can enjoy several women at the same time.It is a good movie after all, though if audience is non-Chinese it can be hard to enjoy: not much visual effect, not much fighting.