Seventh Moon

Plot

Newlywed Melissa (Amy Smart) and her Chinese-American husband Yul (Tim Chiou) are spending their honeymoon in China, where they intend to visit his relatives. During the day they participate in the "Hungry Ghost" Festival, a sort of local Halloween where they drink and celebrate and learn of the tradition of leaving offerings to the spirits on the full moon of the seventh lunar month, when the dead roam among the living.

In the evening, their affable guide Ping (Dennis Chan), whom the couple befriended during their stay, drives them through the countryside to reach the village where Yul's relatives live. However, a few hours later, while Yul is asleep, Ping stops the car and tells Melissa he has to go ask for directions in the small village nearby. One hour later, Melissa and Yul decide to seek out Ping in the village. However, all the houses have boarded up windows and there are live animals left as offerings along the empty streets. The locals start chanting something from behind the doors, but Yul, who's not perfectly fluent in Cantonese, does not understand what they're saying, although it sounds like they're summoning something.

The couple returns to the car and decide to drive away without Ping, trying to find the way back to the city. Soon they meet a wounded stranger on the road, and Melissa decides to help the man. But as soon as they leave the car, they are attacked by strange, pale creatures who start to chase them down. They seek shelter in a barn, where the stranger tries to knock Yul out in order to feed him to the creatures in his place. Melissa manages to subdue the man and drag a wounded Yul back to the car. The stranger follows them up, but is slaughtered by the creatures while Melissa and Yul are barricaded inside the car.

The creatures start smashing the car to reach the couple, but they manage to escape through the trunk, and lock themselves inside a crypt, where the creatures don't seem to be allowed to go. They suddenly hear the villagers chanting again, and they seem to be led by the same male voice they had heard on the radio while first trying to drive away. They are compelled to leave their hiding place and enter a house adorned with lit candles, where a large number of people are gathered. In their trance, they hear reassuring words in their mind. They let the villagers strip them down and start having sex on the floor in front of them, then black out.

Melissa and Yul wake up in a field, tied up to a tree back to back. The creatures are now all around them. Yul, realizing that they are the chosen sacrifices, start telling the demons to take him and spare his wife. The creatures comply, and Melissa wakes up inside the house, while Ping shows up again and explains to her that they have been forced to lure outsiders in as sacrifices, in order to stop the moon demons from taking one of the villagers. Ping says Yul did a very brave thing by letting himself be taken to save his wife. After an enraged Melissa assaults him and starts to savagely beat him for his betrayal, Ping reveals that Yul is still alive, as the moon demons need a live human to be turned into one of them.

Despite Ping's warnings, Melissa goes after her husband, following a trail of candles to the subterranean cave where she finds the moon demons standing still waiting for Yul to bleed out. Yul has begun to transform though the process is incomplete, and he is too weak from his injuries to move. He tells Melissa the creatures are already inside his head, and she has to leave or she'll be killed too once he's turned. They exchange a final vow of love, Melissa promises to visit Yul's relatives, who are still her family now. She puts back on the wedding ring the villagers had taken away from Yul, then resigns herself to leave the cave sobbing. Soon the moon demons begin to chase her again, but are slowed down by Ping, who sacrifices himself out of guilt to allow Melissa's escape.

Once out in the open, the creatures keep pursuing Melissa, and are nearly on top of her when the moon begins to set, turning the demons into silvery dust. As the sun rises Melissa stands in the light looking at the surrounding forest, and in the shade of a tree she sees Yul, fully transformed into one of the creature, staring at her sadly. They look at each other silently until he disappears, too.

Cast

Release

The film was originally released on September 20, 2008 at the Austin Fantastic Fest. It was released on DVD October 6, 2009.

Reception

Based on just two reviews, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that the film has a rating average of 4.9 out of 10. The more favorable of the two reviews, from Steve Barton at Dread Central, stated that "Seventh Moon is a badass and at times downright chilling little movie that deserves its rightful place in your home video collection." By contrast, David Nusair at Reelfilm felt that "Seventh Moon ultimately comes off as a missed opportunity that squanders the relatively promising nature of its setup." Elsewhere, genre critics were enthusiastic, with Film School Rejects claiming that the film was "what I Am Legend would have been without CGI. That’s a good thing." Brett Cullum of DVD Verdict called it "an inventive horror flick that reimagines the Asian ghost genre one more time." Channel Awesome's Phelous critically panned the film for its predictability, awkward and "annoyingly whiny" dialogue, shaky cam, and that it was too dark to see what was going on.