Resurrection

In a world where humanity has given up dreaming in exchange for longevity, individuals known as “The Other Ones” seek out “Deliriants”, beings who have retained such capacity. One monstrous Deliriant is tracked down by Miss Shu, an Other One. Moved by his dedication to the dream life, Shu decides to grant him a gentle death by installing a film projector inside him, and experiences the cinematic dreams he is projected into.

The Deliriant resurfaces in the mid-20th century as Qiu, who is accused of murdering a man by stabbing him with a fountain pen. The Commander, seeking a mysterious suitcase the man carried that could end the ongoing war, tortures Qiu into revealing its location in a mirror shop. At the shop, he discovers a theremin within the suitcase. Utilizing the disorienting layout of the shop, Qiu stabs the Commander in one ear and escapes, but not before stating that he is in fact “the suitcase”. The Commander later stabs himself in the other ear, and plays Bach’s “Come, Sweet Death” on the theremin. He subsequently tracks down Qiu on a train and kills him; both burst into flames in the aftermath.

Thirty years later, the Deliriant is now Mongrel, an art thief stranded in a ruined Buddhist temple. Breaking a bad tooth using a piece of a Buddha statue, he releases a trickster-like Spirit of Bitterness who had been reincarnated into the tooth. Mongrel confesses that he killed his father, whose appearance the Spirit has taken on, in order to spare him an agonising death from rabies. Despite their initial antagonism, the two eventually conduct a Buddhist ritual together. The Spirit achieves Enlightenment in the end, but the thief is turned into an actual dog.

Some decades later, the Deliriant becomes Jia, a con artist who recruits an orphan girl as his sidekick. The girl’s father abandoned her when she was little, leaving her a banknote with a riddle that she believes, once solved, would bring him back. Jia teaches the girl a series of elaborate tricks that allow her to supposedly recognise cards by smell, and the two later successfully swindle a mob boss. Jia plans to leave the girl behind but stumbles upon the banknote with a simple though profane answer to the riddle written on it. Before he can return to the girl, he is robbed and stabbed to death. Meanwhile, the mob boss asks the girl to figure out the final message his estranged daughter left him on a burnt piece of paper before her death. The girl smells the paper and does it successfully.

In a port city on New Year’s Eve, 1999, the Deliriant, now the young hoodlum Apollo, becomes smitten with a young singer and moll named Tai Zhaomei. He claims to have never kissed a girl, while she claims to have never bitten anyone. Wandering through the streets of the city, the two become separated, and Tai is dragged back to her karaoke bar by her boss, Mr. Luo. Apollo breaks into the bar and is severely beaten by Luo’s henchmen, but Luo ultimately allows the couple to leave in peace and sail away on a boat. Tai reveals herself to be a vampire and bites Apollo in the neck with his consent. They kiss passionately as the sun rises, after which Apollo succumbs to his injuries and Tai is overwhelmed by the sunlight.

The Deliriant dies after the final dream. Shu dresses him in his monster garbs, performs a funeral rite for him, and attempts to communicate with him one last time through the language of cinema. The film concludes in a wax movie theater, slowly filled up by bright figures that eventually melt away.

Last Updated: December 05, 2025 at 19:38