The mystery man fails to return by the eve of Chinese New Year as promised. Hanaya repeatedly attempts to provoke the peasants into killing him, but Dong, fearing for his own life, alters Hanaya's words in translation to make him appear conciliatory. Fearing both the mysterious "Me" and the Japanese, the village decides to follow the instructions from "Me" and detains the prisoners in Ma's cellar. Ma hurriedly enlists the help of his fellow villagers. One of the gunnysacks contains Kosaburo Hanaya, a belligerent Japanese sergeant the other Dong Hanchen, an obsequious Chinese interpreter working for the Japanese Army. The man, identified only as "Me", leaves before Ma can catch a glimpse of him. In a small village named Rack-Armor Terrace in Hebei, at the foot of the Great Wall of China, a local peasant called Ma Dasan is caught by surprise when a man bursts into his home one night and deposits two men in gunnysacks, instructing him at gunpoint to keep them captive but alive for the next few days and interrogate them. Jiang hoped that the film illuminates this common human psychological trait of blaming others for disaster that goes beyond Chineseness. In Jiang's own words, the film shows how Chinese literature and film has perpetuated an attitude of blaming the aggressor and casting the Chinese population as passive victims of aggression. This film shelved the theme of "the brave resistance against Japanese aggression" in the original literature, and focused on the themes of "the ignorance of the peasants" and "the absurdity of the war." Contrary to its title, Devils on the Doorstep is not at its core an anti-Japanese war film. The film is inspired by the novel Survival by You Fengwei, and was greatly modified during the process of adaptation. Fearing both the mystery man and the Japanese, the whole village falls into a dilemma over what to do with the two prisoners. One night, a mysterious man brings two captives in sacks (Japanese soldier Teruyuki and translator Dong Hanchen) to the doorstep of a peasant's (Ma Dasan) home and threatens Ma to keep them until he returns to pick them up on New Year's Eve. The story takes place in a small remote village named Gujiatai (or Rack Armor Terrace) near Shanhaiguan, Hebei at the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
The film was initially not allowed to be shown in theaters in China for a certain period but was eventually made commercially available in China since. Shot in black and white to mimic old-time war movies, the film premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival on 12 May and clinched the Grand Prix. Devils on the Doorstep ( simplified Chinese: 鬼子来了 traditional Chinese: 鬼子來了 Japanese: 鬼が来た! literally "the devils are here" the devil is a term of abuse for foreign invaders, here referring to brutal and violent Japanese invaders in China during World War II) is a 2000 Chinese black comedy film directed, co-written and produced by Jiang Wen, starring Jiang himself, Kagawa Teruyuki, Yuan Ding and Jiang Hongbo.