General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Painted Skin (画皮)

Painted Skin (画皮) is a 2008 Chinese fantasy-romance film directed by Gordon Chan, adapted from the short story of the same name in Pu Songling's Qing-dynasty collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异). It recasts the original ghost story as a love triangle between a general, his wife, and a fox spirit who consumes human hearts to keep her human form, and it became one of the highest-grossing Chinese films of its year.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Gordon Chan, with co-writers Abe Kwong Man-Wai and Lau Ho-Leung; action choreography by Stephen Tung Wai¹
Source	Short story "Painted Skin" from Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio¹
Cast	Zhou Xun (Xiaowei), Vicki Zhao Wei (Peirong), Chen Kun (Wang Sheng), Donnie Yen (Pang Yong), Sun Li (Xia Bing), Qi Yuwu (Xiaoyi)³
Release	Mainland public release 26 September 2008; the date 28 September was announced at the film's launch event³^•⁴
Box office	Passed 200 million yuan within 19 days of release, the sixth domestic film to cross that mark since China began keeping box-office statistics²
Budget	Reported as about 120 million yuan by Chinese press and $15 million USD by AsianWiki⁵^•⁶
Awards and ratings	11 awards and 23 nominations including the Golden Rooster Awards; Douban 6.8/10 and IMDb 6.3/10 as of March 2024²
Oscar entry	Hong Kong's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Academy Awards⁶

Spoilers

Story

The film is set in a Han-dynasty-style martial world. General Wang Sheng (Chen Kun) leads his army against bandits in the western regions and rescues a beautiful young woman, Xiaowei (Zhou Xun), whom he brings home to Jiangdu and treats as a guest in his household.⁷ What Wang Sheng does not see is that just before he arrived, Xiaowei devoured a human heart: she is a fox spirit, the "nine-heavens beauty fox," who must eat human hearts to maintain her human shape.⁸

Xiaowei falls in love with Wang Sheng at first sight and, posing as his sworn sister, schemes to replace his wife Peirong (Vicki Zhao). Meanwhile the city is gripped by murders in which the victims are found with their hearts removed; the killings are committed by Xiaoyi (Qi Yuwu), a lizard spirit devoted to Xiaowei, who kills on her behalf out of unrequited love.⁸^•⁹

Peirong sees through Xiaowei and turns for help to Pang Yong (Donnie Yen), a wandering swordsman and her former lover who left Wang Sheng's service after a bloody battle, and to the demon hunter Xia Bing (Sun Li).⁷^•¹⁰ When Peirong discovers Xiaowei's true identity, she offers to take the blame for the murders if Xiaowei will end the killing; Xiaowei instead curses her with a poison that turns her into a white-haired demoness in the eyes of the city. In the end Wang Sheng's heart is shown to belong to Peirong, and Xiaowei must choose whether to give up her human form to redeem herself and restore the lives she destroyed.⁹

From ghost story to marriage drama

Pu Songling's original is a compact tale of a scholar, Wang Sheng of Taiyuan, who shelters a beautiful woman he meets on the road; warned by a Daoist priest, he peeks into his study and finds a green-faced demon painting a human skin with a colored brush. The demon rips out his heart, the priest destroys it, and Wang's wife restores him to life by following the priest's instructions.¹¹

Gordon Chan's version keeps the demon and the painted skin but reworks everything else. Under Chan, who served as both director and co-writer, the frightening ghost story became a warm, multi-threaded romance, and the scholar Wang Sheng became a general.¹¹^•⁷ The demon Xiaowei, though she eats hearts and drinks blood, is filled with longing for love and ultimately gives up thousands of years of cultivated power to save the general, his soldiers, and even her rival; Wang Sheng himself is rewritten as a man faithful to his wife, the opposite of the lecherous scholar of the original.¹² Chinese critics read the film as a supernatural take on adultery and marriage, arriving in a year when "mistress" (小三) had become a popular internet term, and the film's emotional register drew tears from audiences discussing marriage and love.⁵

The producers were explicit that the film was not a horror picture. Chan said he never set out to make one; the skin-peeling scene that defined the older versions lasts only a few seconds on screen, the flayed demon is shown only in soft focus, and the exposed hearts are clean and bloodless. The marketing label "Eastern new fantasy" (东方新魔幻) referred, the producers said, to the fantasy world Pu Songling created, not to comparisons with The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.¹³

Earlier versions and reception

The Liaozhai stories have been adapted for film and television many times. King Hu, the veteran wuxia director, made his own Painted Skin in 1992, his last feature, with Joey Wong as an immortal demon who stays young by eating human hearts and touches up her skin with paint; an earlier Hong Kong version starred Zhu Hong as the painted-skin ghost.¹^•⁵ An earlier mainland release of a Painted Skin film directed by Bao Fang became a street sensation, and a legend spread that an old woman was frightened to death watching it at the Beijing Workers' Cultural Palace cinema. Marshal Chen Yi, after seeing Bao Fang's film, praised it as artistic, thoughtful, and educational, and told the director, who regretted that the demon-transformation scene was not scary enough, "Why do you need it so scary? Don't practice terrorism!"¹⁴

The 2008 film opened amid heavy promotion. Before release, the producers held 26 preview screenings in Beijing, including one attended by Lecture Room (百家讲坛) historians Ji Lianhai, Yan Chongnian, and Kang Zhen, which turned into a session on the film's most moving scenes; Kang Zhen said the film used Liaozhai's "skin" to paint not a ghost but human nature.¹⁴ Critical response was divided. Reviewers praised the story structure and the performances of Zhao, Zhou, and Yen, whose comic, understated turn was called the film's biggest surprise by some reporters, while Chen Kun's portrayal of the central role of Wang Sheng drew the sharpest criticism.¹⁵ Some viewers attacked the film for falling far short of the horror spectacle they expected; others praised Chan for turning a ghost film into a moving romance on a budget of just over 100 million yuan.⁵ The lovehkfilm review called it a surprisingly fun update of Hong Kong's once-abundant horror-fantasy genre, closer in feel to classic wire-fu wuxia than to the polished Zhang Yimou formula, while noting its overwrought emotions and odd score.¹

Production and legacy

The film was a multi-party production led by the Ningxia Film Studio with Shanghai Film Group, Mediacorp's Sparkling Movies of Singapore, and Hong Kong's Golden Sun Films, among others.³^•⁷ Producer Pang Hong, making his first large commercial production, assembled seven investment partners spanning state studios, private companies, cinema chains, and overseas firms. Shooting opened on 17 November 2007 in Ningxia and wrapped on 2 February 2008, with the final Hengdian scene helped by an unexpected heavy snowfall. On the morning after the first preview, pirated master discs were already on the producers' table.¹⁶ AsianWiki reports a ten-week shoot on location in the northern desert of Ningxia and at Hengdian World Studios in Zhejiang.⁶

The film's success made the Liaozhai title a franchise. A sequel, Painted Skin: The Resurrection (画皮Ⅱ), directed by a new filmmaker with the same investor, the Ningxia Film Studio, and producer Pang Hong, brought back Zhou Xun and Chen Kun and was released in June 2012, becoming one of the highest-grossing domestic films in China at the time; Chan instead made Mural (画壁), another Liaozhai adaptation, with the original team split between the two projects.¹⁷ A prequel directed by Chan with Chen Kun was announced for 2019.¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Science fiction and fantasy films (individual works) › Science fiction and fantasy films of the 2000s › Fantasy films of the 2000s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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