This review may contain spoilers
Wasn't planning to watch this remake to be honest, but I guess things just happened. I mean I just happened to find this remake movie so I might as well watch it. I have to say that of the two remakes of Blind, this version followed the original much more closely compared to the Japanese one. Not just in the base plotline but also in the way certain scenes were filmed. But I guess it's inevitable to see how similar the movie was directed, considering this film was directed by the same person who directed the original Blind.That said, even as this remake was very similar to the original and not as loosely adapted as it had been with the Japanese version, there were still some details that were written differently. As the screenwriter for this movie would've added or changed certain elements of the plot to appeal to the Chinese audience. And for people who have seen the original and the Japanese remake, noticing the different details have to be one of the things that will stood out to you.
For one, the dead brother in this movie was written to be an aspiring singer instead of a b-boy. The way the brother died was similar to the original except the part where instead of a handcuff, the brother was tied to the car with a chain. The motive for the killer also slightly changed and written to have a bit more connection to Xiaoxing. As with the latter Japanese remake, this movie also incorporated the use of social medias and dating apps. Which wasn't in the original. In a way, this Chinese remake was like a cross between the Korean original and the Japanese remake, even when the latter was made much later than this version.
Lin Zhong was written to be a young skater, and I guess that's what influenced the Japanese remake to have Haruma being a skateboarder. And rather than the orphanage being that place of memories for our main witness and her late brother, this movie changed it into an old villa.
It was interesting to see what kind of details were presented differently in this remake compared to the original. The obvious ones being Xiaoxing and Lin Zhong's initial report on what they noticed and saw during the hit-and-run case. Like a lot of the details that originally was revealed and found out much later ended up being laid out from the very start, which kind of removing a bit of the mystery from the original movie. Other than that would be the subway chase from the original being changed into a chase inside an empty mall in this remake. Unlike the original and the Japanese remake, this Chinese version didn't reveal whether or not Xiaoxing did decide to resume her police training nor have Lin Zhong aspire to follow her same footstep. And the casualties in both Korean and Japanese version met different fates in this movie, in which while in itself shouldn't be bad, it makes me wonder what's the point of the killer still being referred to as a serial killer when his part was changed so much that he didn't really kill most of his victims.
Overall, watching this remake was interesting. It was nice to pick up on the different details and similar visual cues and compare how the different remakes recreate the scenes from the original movie. On its own, the movie was fine as it is. But if you love and enjoyed the original Blind, then you may end up finding this movie a bit lacking. Compared to this remake, the original was portrayed to be much more mysterious. There were parts in the original that were written to be very vague while this remake revealed some details much more clearly.
Though, having said that... I'm not sure why this remake decide to change the killer's motivation... as well as the fact that he hadn't end up killing any of his victims but people who ended up caught in his action and trying to create more connection to the blind witness, which did not exist in the original. But that aside, the movie was fine on its own. There's quite an overuse of a certain song that I first heard from the movie Storm Riders but that's it.
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