2017 saw the release of two competing adaptations of best-sellers by Lei Mi, a teacher of criminal law whose popular character, the gifted criminal profiler Fang Mu, had already been brought to the small in screen in 2015 and 2016. Xie Dongshen’s Guilty of Mind was released first and would go on to win the box-office battle (though not by much) over Xu Jizhou’s The Liquidator. However, with both films adapted from different books in the series, they’re not so much competing as completing each other: Guilty of Mind features a young Fang Mu, still in Police School, while The Liquidator has him weathered and semi-retired; and Lei Mi’s pulpy, lurid brand of thriller is faithfully rendered onscreen in both films. Here, dogged, bitter cop Tai Wei (Liao Fan) is on the trail of a vampiric serial killer, who drains his victims of their blood and then drinks it. In an investigative dead end, Tai turns to his mentor Qiao (Chang Kuo Chu), who recommends one his best students to him: Fang Mu (Li Yifeng), a young aspiring police officer, socially awkward but gifted with an uncanny ability to instinctively profile murderers and get in their shoes. Tai is sceptical, but soon the investigation is making strides.

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