General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

That Demon Within (魔警)

That Demon Within (魔警) is a 2014 Hong Kong psychological action-crime thriller directed by Dante Lam (林超贤), starring Daniel Wu (吴彦祖) as a dutiful police officer who unknowingly saves the life of a notorious armed robber, played by Nick Cheung (张家辉), and descends into guilt and psychosis as the killer resumes his crimes¹. The film premiered in the Panorama section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival and opened in Hong Kong on April 17, 2014¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Directed by Dante Lam; screenplay by Jack Ng (吴炜伦) and Lam¹^•³
Leads	Daniel Wu as Constable Dave Wong (王伟业); Nick Cheung as robber Hon Kong (韩江)¹
Running time and rating	112 minutes; Category IIB in Hong Kong; Cantonese³^•²
Premiere	64th Berlin International Film Festival, 2014, Panorama section¹
Hong Kong release and gross	Opened 17/04/2014; grossed HK$17,395,364 over 42 days²
Critical scores	47% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (15 reviews); Metascore 51 on Metacritic (8 reviews)⁴^•⁵
Awards	Five nominations at the 34th Hong Kong Film Awards; Recommended Film at the 21st Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards¹

Spoilers

Plot

Dave Wong is a conscientious constable stationed at a busy West Kowloon hospital. During a bloody standoff after a diamond robbery, the wounded gang leader Hon Kong staggers into the emergency ward; not recognizing him, Wong donates blood and saves his life³. Hon recovers, escapes, and returns to killing police officers and civilians, and Wong, wracked with regret, sets out to capture him personally¹.

As Wong pursues Hon, dreams, hallucinations, and flashbacks mount up, and the body count rises among gangsters, family members, policemen, and civilians³. Hon's crew, the "Gang from Hell," are followers of the Demon King, a figure from Chinese folklore; they wear demon masks during robberies and hold meetings in the Kowloon Funeral Parlour, and most of its members work day jobs in the funeral industry³^•⁶. Wong's repressed memories center on a childhood sin involving fire, and the film offers competing explanations for his breakdown: childhood guilt and possible schizophrenia, or a supernatural curse³^•⁶. Near collapse, Wong resolves to finish Hon and his gang even at the cost of his own life¹.

Production and inspiration

The film was widely linked in the press to the 2006 case of Tsui Po-ko (徐步高), a Hong Kong policeman implicated in killings of fellow officers, but Dante Lam said the case was an inspiration for exploring why a person goes off the rails rather than a retelling; Daniel Wu said the filmmakers invented a new story from the question of how a policeman becomes deranged, imagining his family background, childhood, and the influence of colleagues⁷. The Los Angeles Times described the screenplay as transforming the "irredeemable real-life dirty cop Tsui Po-ko" into the tormented hero Dave Wong⁸.

Lam made the film immediately after the sunny martial-arts hit Unbeatable (2013), returning to a darker register; he called it his most violent and most satisfying work⁹. The key crew included cinematographer Kenny Tse, editor Patrick Tam, and composer Leon Ko, whose score forgoes melody for screeching solos on archaic and traditional instruments³^•¹⁰. Production companies included Emperor Film Production and Sil-Metropole Organisation³.

Release and box office

The film world-premiered at the Berlinale in February 2014 and was the closing film of the 38th Hong Kong International Film Festival¹. It opened in Hong Kong on April 17, 2014, taking about HK$1.3 million on its first day to lead the daily box office ahead of Captain America: The Winter Soldier¹¹. Over the four-day Easter holiday (April 18 to 21) it earned HK$7,792,000, the top film of the holiday, for a cumulative HK$9,232,959 by April 22¹²; its final Hong Kong gross was HK$17,395,364². It opened in mainland China on April 18, 2014, and Lam reported in an interview that its mainland box office exceeded 100 million RMB¹³. China Lion Film released it in the United States on April 18, 2014, day-and-date with the Hong Kong release¹⁴.

Reception

Critical response was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes the film scored 47 percent among 15 critics, with an audience score of 40 percent⁴; its Metacritic Metascore was 51, based on 8 reviews⁵. The New York Times's Nicolas Rapold called it "pulp done with passion" from "the veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Dante Lam"⁴. Variety's Maggie Lee called it Lam's darkest work to date, in which violence is "not just graphic but ugly"⁵. More negative reviews included the Los Angeles Times, which faulted the film for reducing mental illness to "pedestrian psychobabble"⁸, and ScreenAnarchy, which found the plotting loose and the script increasingly preposterous despite a spirited performance from Wu¹⁰.

In Hong Kong the film earned five nominations at the 34th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2015: Best Director (Lam), Best Actor (Wu), Best Film Editing (Patrick Tam and Poon Hung-yan's team credit of 谭家明 and 彭正熙), Best Sound Design, and Best Visual Effects¹. The Hong Kong Film Critics Society named it a Recommended Film and nominated Lam and Ng for Best Screenplay¹.

Style and themes

Commentators located the film within Lam's long run of police thrillers; between 2008 and 2014 he directed six, from The Beast Stalker to That Demon Within¹⁵. Critics noted its heavy use of expressionist imagery: twisted architectural lines, saturated color contrasts in the hallucination scenes, and extensive use of funeral parlors, graveyards, and burial rituals, unusual for a Hong Kong action film¹⁶^•³. The People's Daily overseas edition highlighted the Demon King mask as a cold, violent, stylized image rarely seen in Hong Kong cinema, and read the film as an inquiry into good and evil in which the policeman's pursuit of the demon becomes a descent into demonhood himself¹⁷. A Hong Kong Film Critics Society citation read the film as reflecting Hong Kong identity anxiety, extending Lam's fatalistic worldview into psychological thriller territory¹⁸.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Action thrillers, 2010s › Crime and vigilante thrillers

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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