After watching the trailer for the movie and looking at all the promotional material, I initially expected that Monster Run would be like a Chinese version of Ghostbusters or Men In Black. I was wrong, however, when the result was anything but that.
Instead, Monster Run ultimately feels closer in tone and structure to that of the young adult movie adaptations and movie franchises which were popular back in the 2000s/2010s, such as Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, and the like.
Monster Run follows Ji Mo (Jessie Li), a young woman who spent the past few years in a psychiatric hospital to treat her supposed paranoid personality disorder. She’s like the Haley Joel Osmont from The Sixth Sense, However, instead of ghosts or “dead people”, she can see fantasy creatures and monsters.
After finally getting discharged, her mother is nowhere to be found and she is then forced to eke out a living by working at a convenience store. Just when she’s trying to live a normal life, a monster hunter named Meng (Shawn Yue) barges into the store one night with his partner, Paper (a literal living piece of paper voiced by Qiao Shan), and hunts down a monster right in front of her.
From then on, Ji Mo’s life gets more intertwined with Meng’s, but it turns out that a mysterious lady named Lotus (Kara Hui); who is the antagonist of Monster Run, has nefarious plans for Ji Mo.