Douban's Mid-Autumn Screen: Hong Kong Cops, Kids' Pigs and a 7.6 From America
China’s National Day holiday is traditionally one of the busiest stretches of the movie calendar, and 2026 was no exception. As families filled cinemas between sightseeing trips and reunion dinners, the review platform Douban became the de facto scoreboard, with users rating nearly a dozen new releases within days. The slate on offer was unusually international for a Chinese holiday: homegrown animation, Hong Kong action, Hollywood creature features, a Canadian kids’ adventure and even an Egyptian drama all competed for the same tickets.
At the top of the action pile sits 侦战 (Zhen Zhan), a Hong Kong-mainland co-production running 88 minutes. Directed by Kong Lingzheng, it stars Louis Koo — one of Hong Kong cinema’s most bankable leading men — alongside Cisha and Simon Yam. Its Douban score of 4.3 places it firmly in “watchable but flawed” territory, a familiar landing spot for genre thrillers that trade plot logic for chase sequences. For audiences who grew up on Hong Kong cop films, the appeal is the cast more than the script.
Families had plenty to choose from. 小猪佩奇·完美假期, a China-UK co-production of Peppa Pig, scored a solid 6.2, while 汪汪队立大功大电影3：勇闯恐龙岛 — the third Paw Patrol feature, sending the pups to a dinosaur island — earned 7.1. The Canadian-American production, directed by Cal Brunker and featuring the voices of Mckenna Grace, Terry Crews and Fortune Feimster, shows how reliably imported children’s brands still perform with Chinese parents looking for a safe two-hour distraction.
Domestic animation was busy too. 红孩儿火焰山之王 revisits the Red Boy of Journey to the West fame, a character Chinese audiences know as intimately as Western viewers know Robin Hood. 新大头儿子和小头爸爸之天眼系列：失控的第七天 revives Big Head Son and Small Head Dad, a cartoon franchise that has run on Chinese television for decades. Both currently sit at zero on Douban, which simply means too few ratings have accumulated to produce a score — not that audiences hated them.
The most striking number of the holiday belonged to 痴迷, an American film directed by Currie Barker and starring Michael Johnston, Inda Navarette and Cooper Tomlinson. Its 7.6 is the highest on the list and a reminder that Chinese cinephiles are often warmer toward slow-burn imported dramas than domestic audiences are. Also arriving from the United States was 鲸口脱险, a 106-minute survival story directed by Brian Duffield and featuring Josh Brolin and Elisabeth Shue.
Two quieter entries stand out for different reasons. 一个夜晚与三个夏天, a 100-minute Chinese film directed by Gangzhen and performed by a Tibetan cast including Tsering Yangjin, brings a rare regional voice to a holiday slate dominated by franchise fare. And 生日快乐, a 92-minute Egyptian film directed by Sara Gohar, is the kind of release that would have been almost unthinkable in Chinese multiplexes a decade ago.
Rounding out the list was 象行记, a 90-minute China-Singapore documentary-style feature directed by Gu Yujin. Together the lineup says something about how Chinese audiences now watch: a Hong Kong thriller on Friday, an animated pig on Saturday, an Egyptian drama on Sunday. The holiday box office may reward the biggest brands, but Douban’s ratings tell a more interesting story about taste.