Lost Souls sees director T.F. Mou treating the subject of illegal immigration from China to Hong Kong with the same level of tact and sensitivity that he gave the prisoners of Japanese experiment camp Unit 731 in his notorious shocker Man Behind the Sun (1988). In other words, virtually none - any pretense of social commentary is quickly abandoned in favour of pure sensationalism.
The film opens as three illegal immigrants arrive in Hong Kong, having swum from mainland China, with the hope of making it to Diamond Hill, a place of unimaginable prosperity. Unfortunately, the trio are quickly captured by criminals, who make money by holding people for ransom, or by selling women to brothels. What follows is a catalogue of degradation, humiliation, physical and sexual abuse, and death, the three new arrivals thrown into a barn with other unfortunates, stripped naked and beaten until they give up their relative's telephone numbers, which the villains need to extract ransom money.
Virtually plotless for most of its running time, the film careens from one act of brutality to another, with an excess of full frontal nudity from both sexes in the process. There's a gang rape scene that culminates in the victim being swung wildly around the barn, still attached to her attacker at the groin, before being thrown across the barn like a rag doll; a woman is covered in petrol and burnt alive; and in the film's most eye-watering scene, the gang's chief gets the vaseline out to sodomise one of the young men (who is bound to a chair, ass up).
To be honest, the lack of storyline and continuous deviancy eventually results in tedium, and a much needed change of pace is more than welcome when the prisoners finally revolt (not that they weren't already revolting, having smeared themselves in cow dung to try and avoid being raped!): the poor guy who was buggered gets revenge, killing his attacker by biting him on the neck (but is beaten to death thereafter by the boss's henchmen), and it's not long before the rest of the prisoners decide enough is enough. Turning the tables on their tormenters, the immigrants clothe themselves and head for the city in a mini-van, but, in a scene reminiscent of The Great Escape, are rumbled by police at a road-block when one of them makes a faux pas (by saying "Thank you, comrade").
The fittingly downbeat ending sees the only immigrant that evaded capture finally making it to Diamond Hill, only to discover that it is a slum. Bummer!
6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
