The Snare of Pity

In the bloody aftermath of Kong Rong’s execution, an aged, mute servant who once served the famed scholar lives as a hermit in the ruins of the Kong estate. When a band of marauders breaks in seeking a legendary hidden treasure, the old man turns his home into a labyrinth of gruesome, everyday-object traps. As the night erupts into screams and viscera, the ensuing carnage becomes a brutal meditation on the hollow sympathy of the masses—those who shed tears for Kong Rong but did nothing to challenge the tyranny that killed him. The recluse’s final, merciless stand reveals that pity, without becoming institutional justice, is merely self-serving theater.