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1 May
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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POP! Goes the Dead Kid
I’ve seen nearly all the famous Asian horror films. And by ‘famous’, I mean the ones that Hollywood tried to remake: The Eye, The Ring, A Tale of Two Sisters, Pulse, Dark Water. There was just one I’d missed: Ju-on, aka The Grudge. That’s been rectified.
The movie begins, as all good movies do, with a murder. More than one murder, actually. We don’t know who or why, but you do know where- so it’s hardly a surprise when Social Welfare Office volunteer Rika shows up on the doorway of the House’o’Murders to check up on the joint’s inhabitant, a really old lady who has let the place go to hell. Like all the idiots in Pulse, when Rika finds a door that’s sealed shut with packing tape, she just has to open it. She finds a cat. Oh, and a little dead ghost kid.
The film then jumps to some unspecified time (but the same bat-location), when the old lady’s son and daughter-in-law are complaining to each other about the mess and ruckus the old lady’s making at night. The daughter-in-law, Kazumi, finally seems to get a clue when little-dead-ghost-kid handprints show up on the doors, and a random cat appears in the house. The son (who has a truly wretched haircut) comes home from work to find his wife all comatose with terror, just before she becomes an ex-parrot. Then Kazumi’s sister comes over for dinner, barges in without knocking, and is promptly treated to the son acting fucking crazy. He kicks her out.
Then we get the sister’s POV- she’s called Hitomi, and we also get our first clue toward placing these sections in some kind of chronological order. She sees some creepy shit in the big, weirdly depopulated building where she works. In her predictably deserted apartment complex, there’s elevator scariness, and her freak-ass brother shows up. So she logically hides under the covers, because if she can’t see him, he can’t see her, right? Then there’s creepy TV stuff and creepy dead people under the covers stuff.
And then it jumps to a Social Welfare Office employee, who goes to the Death House. He finds Rika, comatose with terror, and calls the cops. The old lady has kicked the bucket with the help of a blackish misty spirit ghost thing. The cops show up and find Kazumi and her husband, who have become living-challenged. Rika finds her voice and tells the cops all about the little dead ghost kid, only to learn that some time back this dude went nuts and got all stabby with his wife and their son disappeared, and since then all the people who lived in that house have turned into worm food Welfare Office guy buys the farm and the cops get the old detective who worked on the original murder case to help them. Toyama has some serious PTSD from that case, and it just gets worse.
Meanwhile, dead people keep dogging Hitomi. Toyama wisely decides to burn the haunted place to the ground, but the other cops stop him and are treated to some creepy long-haired dead chick action. Toyama joins the Choir Invisible, and then we’re off again, to the point of view of Izumi, Toyama’s daughter, four years after Toyama dies. She brilliantly goes into the house with some friends on a dare, and all her friends immediately go the way of all flesh like it’s some mass schoolgirl extinction event. Izumi loses her shit. Izumi then takes a dirt nap.
Finally the movie jumps to Kayoko, the perforated housewife, except even though the title says “Kayako” it actually just goes back to Rika, who’s awakened at night by a chorus of cats wailing (like I am, because my neighbors lets her damned felines roam around outside and use my yard for a litter box) and is generally all touchy and shit. Her friend (also a Welfare Office person) calls to say she is at some house where a kid hasn’t shown up to school, and the kid is there, but the parents aren’t, and three guesses as to which house it is and which kid it is and the first two don’t count. Though why the hell Rika’s friend doesn’t know where the Cursed House is and all about it is a mystery to me. Seems like information you might want to tell your friends/co-workers, you know? So Rika books it back to the Evil Abode to save her stupid friend, only to meet her maker when the ghost of the stabby husband pops in to murder her. The end.
In Ju-on, the curse given by the dead housewife is far-ranging and pretty damn random. Anyone associated with the dead ghost people or the house or people who know other people who were in the house, will die. You’ll probably die if you walk past the house or see it in a real estate ad, too. Apparently we’re just meant to assume that every single character in this movie will eventually die, and from there everyone in Japan, because this curse is like the bird flu. Because of this pervasiveness, there’s no resolution: Rika’s dead, along with about a hundred other people, and none of it matters a bit because the stabbed housewife is so incredibly pissed off that she will never be sated, at least not for several more movies.
Ju-on isn’t scary in the least, mainly because every horror convention it whips out has been done to death before and since. Dead kids in kabuki makeup. Dead women creeping down the stairs on all fours. Dead people in the mirror behind someone. Dead women with their faces hidden by hair, lurking in a bathroom, or under the covers, or under the stairs, or in the attic. TV reception going bonkers, creepy static voices on the phone. The horror bits are really just bloody housewife/little dead ghost kid’s oil-painted faces repetitively popping up into the frame like some kind of weirdo jack-in-the-box. Yawn.
The POV-hopping is interesting enough, but overdone- we never really feel like we get to know any of these characters enough to actually care what happens to them (I mean, they’re all going to die obviously, but I really didn’t give a shit). The way the movie plays with chronology is cool; the curse apparently even gets to time-travel, for poor old freaked-out Toyama gets to see his daughter Izumi in the house, in some kind of future vision, right before he croaks.
Now, I am a big baby. One time I watched a (totally, obviously fake) alien abduction video while my husband wasn’t home, and I didn’t turn off the lights for two days. I sit up nights because if I fall asleep, the Mothman might get me. If I ever actually saw a ghost, I’d run screaming like a little girl. So if I say Ju-on doesn’t do it for me, it honestly doesn’t do it for me, and It definitely won’t do it if you are more skeptical than me- and I believe in damn near everything.
The Verdict: I am holding a grudge against all the people who claim this is the “scariest horror film ever OMG”.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: horror, japan, ju-on, movies, review, takashi shimizu |
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9 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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One night last week Shapiro Keats came home late to find me curled up on the couch, the living room lights blazing, clutching the cat like a feline shield. “Did you watch a scary movie?” He sighed.
Yes, yes I did. And I fully admit that Filipino horror movie The Maid probably wouldn’t have been half as scary if I had watched it, say, in the day time, when there was someone else in the house.
Rosa is a cute 18-year-old Filipino girl who arrives in Singapore to work as a maid for a Chinese family living there. Her employers are a retired Peking opera star and his wife. They seem like pretty cool people, except- oops!- they forgot to mention they have a mentally challenged adult son. But Ah Soon is a good guy, a grown man who acts like a toddler (a lot like my son, actually). Rosa doesn’t actually seem to do much work; she spends most of her time peeking into dark closets and opening and closing creaky doors. She finds a mysterious bag of clothes stuck under her bed, and does the only logical thing; she starts wearing them.
Rosa has had the bad luck to start work during the Chinese seventh month, when the gate to the afterlife is supposedly open. Her employers spend lots of time placating the ancestors by burning money and leaving food in front of the house. Her mistress even flips her shit when Rosa goes to the mailbox by herself; the ‘hungry ghost man’ is everywhere, just looking for some cute girl to terrorize. But Rosa doesn’t know all the superstitions: at an opera performance she sits in a seat reserved for the ancestors, and she nearly sweeps up a pile of ash from a burned offering. This pisses off the ancestors to no end, apparently, because immediately she starts seeing ghosts, all the usual Asian kinds- little kids, long-haired women, dead peeps in various stages of decomposition. But it’s cool, her mistress assures her. Once the seventh month is over, the ghosts will split and leave Rosa alone.
Then Ah Soon eats some of the food left out for the ancestors, and he starts seeing ghosts too. Rosa gets more and more freaked out, until it doesn’t look like she can wait until the end of the month to get rid of the dead people. Of course there’s a reason why Rosa’s employers are so hell-bent on keeping the ghosts at bay. Rosa’s not their first maid, after all. Esther ran off with some guy…or maybe she didn’t.
The plot of The Maid is pretty straightforward, and, in the end, predictable, except for one nice little twist that took me by surprise (but I tend to be rather dense about these things, too; Shapiro Keats would have figured it out in five minutes).
Most of the scares in The Maid are shock effects; quick cuts that flash a ghostly face at you, accompanied by a sudden burst of background music. None of the ghosts seems particularly menacing, besides being, well, ghosts; a dead child deliberately scares Rosa, but the ones who occupy the empty row at the opera house just wave cheerfully at her. There are hands popping out of laundry piles, ghosts showing up in the reflection in a cabinet door, translucent figures floating past doorways. There are nicely creepy dream/vision sequences, as when Rosa follows a trail of blood through a deserted apartment complex. In another, a Filipino girl Rosa has befriended is struck instantly mad when she is hit by the shadow of a coffin as a hearse passes by.
The dialogue is conducted in Cantonese and English. Alessandra de Rossi , who plays Rosa, speaks perfectly fine English, but the Asian actors are harder to understand, and there are no subtitles. I had to go back a couple times and listen to a couple conversations twice to figure it all out. The acting is decent; Benny Soh as Ah Soon is endearing if occasionally annoying. de Rossi is a little wooden, but it may simply be because English isn’t her first language.
One of the irritating things about The Maid is that the sound levels are uneven. I had to turn it up several times to hear the dialogue, and down when the music was overwhelming. Since I watched it on the Netflix Instant Stream and not a DVD, this is a problem with the sound mixing.
The Verdict: Watch it alone, and it will freak your shit out. Even if you watch it during the day, it’s interesting to learn the various superstitions associated with the Chinese seventh month.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Film Reviews, Reviews | Tag: horror, Movie, phlippines, review, the maid |
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13 Dec
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Christmas is coming, and that means I’m going fucking insane from all the carols blasting in stores and snow up to my knees and our neighbor’s house, which is lit up like a horny firefly and blasting that one Alvin and the Chipmunks song where Alvin is bitching about wanting a hula hoop- just the one song, mind you, over and over, but our neighbor is seriously old and I think he looks forward to this all year, so no way am I going to complain-and trying to wrap gifts while a cat sits on one side of the wrapping paper and the boy sits on the other (and tries to take all my pretty pre-made sticky bows apart). So, here’s some Junji Ito manga to make us all feel better and remind us of how utterly creepy and soul-crushing the world actually is, no matter what Johnny Mathis wants you to believe.
These short stories are pure Ito: human bodies twisted almost beyond recognition, awful things rising from the depths of the ocean, slime everywhere. Merry Christmas.
| Category: Uncategorized | Tag: horror, japan, junji ito, manga |
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9 Feb
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Posted by Mazinga
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A decade or so ago, finding anime and other Asian media used to be hard. Fans had to settle for whatever mediocre dubs made it onto television, mail order from small suppliers like AnimEigo, lurk Usenet for fansub contacts or scrounge for low-quality videotape dubs at fan conventions. Today, though, one can pick up DVDs of the new Astro Boy series or Godzilla: Final Wars at the local grocery store, and for a mere ten bucks, yet. That’s how I found the subject of this review: Resident Evil: Degeneration, an all-CGI feature film of the venerable survival horror franchise. (For that matter, not long ago I got DVDs of Dario Argento’s giallo Deep Red and Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, of all places!)
Resident Evil: Degeneration is the film longtime fans of the survival horror classic have been waiting for. It’s essentially a feature-length CGI cutscene, but still offers plenty of fun for fans of the franchise. Co-produced by game creator Capcom and Sony Home Entertainment (Japan), the film features two popular characters from the series, Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy, and the English-language voice actors who portray them in the games. It’s also, naturally enough, much more faithful to the source material than the live-action movie series.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: film, horror, Resident Evil, zombie |
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13 Nov
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Finally, the last of my Halloween Asian horror reviews! Unfortunately, the movie sucked. There are spoilers.
Cure (Japan, 1997)
Cure is billed as a horror movie, but it’s really more of a psychological thriller. I wanted to like Cure, I really did. The concept is, as far as I know, unique among suspense films. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get into it; despite the interesting idea behind it, the movie is a jumbled mess.
Takabe is a police detective with a face like a basset hound and Richard Gere hair. His wife is disabled; she seems to have short-term memory loss so severe that she can go to the convenience store and get lost on the way home. It’s a stressful situation for Takabe, who secretly feels that his wife has become a burden instead of a partner. As if that weren’t weird enough, he’s stuck on a really bizarre case: a string of serial murders with one connection; every victim has an X cut into their throat, severing both carotid arteries. In each case, the murderer is apprehended quickly, because they make no attempt to hide or cover up the crime. They’re all normal people: a doctor, a loving husband, a cop. All of them seem to have no memory of the events leading up to the murder, and are horrified by their actions afterward.
In his investigation, Takabe turns up another connection between the killings. Shortly before each murder, the perps had encounters with a scruffy young drifter named Mamiya, who seems to have no short-term memory whatsoever. Takiya finally gets his hands on Mamiya, who plays dumb. But Takabe knows he is hiding something.
With the help of a police psychologist, Takabe learns that Mamiya is a former psychology student who is obsessed with hypnotism. He’s not actually an amnesiac at all; he uses that as an excuse to approach people and hypnotize them into killing others. But Takabe seems immune to his powers, which fascinates Mamiya. Mamiya eventually escapes from police custody. Takabe chases him down and kills him, then apparently takes up Mamiya’s mantle, mesmerizing others to make them kill.
The main problem with Cure is that is explains nothing. Nothing. I am all for open endings and for some mystery to make the viewer think, but Cure doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Why is Mamiya all about hypnotism? Why does he want to make other people- total strangers- kill? Why can’t he hypnotize Takabe? Why does Takabe kill him? Why would the detective take over Mamiya’s work? What the Hell does the title mean? Takabe learns that the Japanese are traditionally leery of hypnotism. At one point, the police psychologist shows Takabe an old film of a woman undergoing hypnotherapy, and explains that the woman later killed her son, cutting his throat in an X. They make much of the fact that you can’t see the hypnotist’s face in the film – but nothing ever comes if it. They make the vaguest suggestions about an underground secret society of murderous Japanese hypnotists, but the hint is so obscure you can’t even be sure that’s what they’re getting at.
The movie isn’t particularly well-shot, either. There are numerous long-distance shots – entire scenes are shot from far away, so the characters look like insects while they converse in voice-overs (there’s lots of talking in this movie, but none of it really tells the audience anything) and long, slow scenes that had no apparent purpose other than padding Cure’s running time.
Because the movie gives us nothing concerning Mamiya’s or Takabe’s motivations, the actors don’t have much subtlety, or even much to do at all. Koji Yakusho is alternately mopey and angry as Takabe. Masato Hagiwara, is annoying as Hell, but since that’s the nature of the character I guess he did what he could with what he was given.
Cure could have been good, or at least entertaining in an outrageous, Dan Brown-y way; the idea is neat. But the writers just didn’t put in enough effort. It’s fine for a movie to leave a few untied strings, but when there are far more questions than answers, we have a problem.
Recommend-o-meter: Cure doesn’t fulfill its potential. Don’t waste your time.
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2 Nov
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Clive Barker + Ryuhei Kitamura = Anime Awesomeness??
I don’t know about this. Clive Barker is OK (he created Hellraiser, after all) and Ryuhei Kitamura is pretty OK. But together?
I really think Kitamura should make a tournament film. That way it would have lots of what he’s good at (ass-kicking) and not much of what he isn’t so good at (scenes where people are talking).
| Category: Anime | Tag: Anime, clive barker, horror, ryuhei kitamura |
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29 Oct
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Posted by Musashi
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| Category: Yellow Menace Theater | Tag: film, halloween, horror, japan, yellow menace theater |
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28 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Not so much a ghost story as an urban legend little kids tell other little kids to scare them, Kuchisake Onna is one bad lady. Of course, when I was in Japan it was winter and about 10th person was wearing a surgical mask, so you’d never know it was her until it was too late.
One evening, a girl met a woman who had a red coat and a big white mask on her mouth on her way home from school. The woman asked “Do you think I’m beautiful?” The girl could not see clearly the woman’s face because of her mask. However, the girl thought that the woman was quite beautiful. The girl answered obediently “Yes, you are beautiful.” Suddenly, the woman asked again “Am I really beautiful?” while taking off the mask. The woman’s mouth split open to her ear. The girl ran out of fear and escaped from the area. However, the woman pursued the girl with terrible speed. The woman caught up with the girl easily. The woman said “I want to do for you what was done to my face.” The woman had a big sickle hidden. Then, the woman split the girl’s mouth with the sickle…
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She was most active in 1979 from spring to summer. Her name was very famous around Japan just only for that term. It seems that mistake was made when she was in surgery. That is to say, she was a real person. However, she suffered abnormal conditions in her soul from the shock when her mouth split, and people did not know why she came to attack children.
She stood in the shadow of a telegraph pole in the evening. Then, she asked “Am I beautiful?” when children passed in the area. If you answered “yes”, she would take off the mask, and ask again. However, if you answered “no”, she also took off the mask, and she said “I want to do for you what was done to my face.” After all, you could not be safe whether you answered good or bad. Then, she pursued with terrible speed the children.
According to a report, seemingly, she could run 100m in only 3 seconds. They could not run away. She instantly caught them and she split them with a sickle, kitchen knife or razor.
To tell the truth, she did not have unusual attributes. It was only a simple story about an unusual person who attacked a child.
Where did she hide the sickle? Presumably the same place Immortals keep their swords…
| Category: Uncategorized | Tag: horror, japan, kuschisake onna, urband legend |
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27 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Spoiler-free!
Acacia (South Korea, 2003)
Acacia looks to be a ‘bad seed’ movie, where the evil adopted kid insinuates himself into a nice family and then proceeds to weak havoc. But in a clever inversion of the genre, the ‘bad seed’ has every right to be pissed, and the movie turns what appears to be a worn-out theme into a wrenching tragedy.
Mi-sook and Do-il are a lovely suburban couple who live in a nice house with Do-il’s widowed father. Do-il is a doctor, and Mi-sook a textiles artist. Their only problem is that they can’t have a kid. They decide to adopt; Mi-sook insists on adopting an older child, a six-year-old boy, based on his artwork- unsettling Edvard Munch-like drawings of faceless people. Jin-Sung is a quiet kid with a troubled past, who believes the spirit of his deceased birth mother lives in the dead acacia tree in the backyard. Mi-sook tries to draw him into the family, but she isn’t sure how, and in her attempts she makes some painful missteps. Jin-Sung gets along best with Do-il’s father, and makes friends with the little girl next door. But his relationship with his adoptive mother suffers when her incredible bitch of a mother visits and makes nasty comments about adopted children in general and Jin-Sung in particular, right in front of him.
Things get worse when Mi-sook unexpectedly becomes pregnant. Jin-Sung doesn’t think much of his new baby brother, which leads to more friction. One night, after a particularly vicious fight, he runs off into the rain and disappears. After the boy vanishes, the dead acacia tree suddenly begins to bloom. As the tree comes to life, the family falls apart. Fatal accidents start happening, all of them under the acacia tree. As the truth about what really happened to Jin-Sung comes to light, Mi-sook and Do-il spiral out of control and into violence and madness.
Acacia has a vaguely David Lynch feel, with the perfect suburban family and neighborhood that hides dark secrets. But Acacia lacks Lynch’s brand of delicious weirdness, settling instead into a dark psychological thriller with some supernatural aspects. The movie’s misdirection initially succeeds, but the scenes meant to show Jin-Sung’s ‘evilness’ are absurd (for example, in one scene he sees a loose thread and unravels Mi-sook’s latest tapestry, while she watches in paroxysms of horror- but anyone who has ever known a six-year-old boy can tell you they don’t have to be evil to do that). The viewer quickly realizes that the kid is the victim here.
Acacia is slickly made, with high production values. There are no truly scary scenes , but several disturbing ones: one memorable scene near the end shows the interior of the house draped with skeins of red yarn, like blood dripping down the walls.
The acting is solid. Hye-jin Shim is good as a woman who is trying- and failing- to learn to be a mom. Jin-geun Kim feels a little rehearsed; he isn’t quite believable as the husband/father whose behavior descends into fury and violence after Jin-Sung disappears, but he sure tries hard. As Jin-Sung, Oh-bin Mun just has to sit quietly and look unhappy. Most likeable is Na-yoon Jeong as the grandfather who seems to be the only person with a hope of understanding Jin-Sung.
Recommend-o-meter: Acacia is a slow-moving film with plenty of atmosphere that will keep you hooked, so long as you don’t mind being thoroughly disgusted by the way adults can treat children.
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26 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Spoilers abound. You have been warned!
Wag Kang Lilingon (The Philippines, 2006)
Wag Kang Lilingon (Don’t Look Back) is two films for the price of one, tied together at the end by a clever plot twist. The twist is the best part of the movie, and it’s kind of a shame you have to sit through both films before you get to it, but such is life. The second movie, Salamin, is much better than the first, Uyayi.
Uyayi centers on Melissa, a heavily made-up young nurse who works the night shift at one of those typical decrepit Asian horror movie hospitals. The mortality rate of the hospital has shot up recently, and Melissa suspects foul play on the part of a rude doctor. She and her reporter boyfriend James concoct a plan to get him admitted so they can do some investigating. Their investigation turns up ghosts, and lots of them. But then Melissa discovers that James was once admitted to the psychiatric ward at the same hospital, and wonders if maybe he has some ulterior motives for wanting to be admitted again.
Of course he’s not. The big, totally predictable twist in Uyayi is that Melissa is nuttier than your Grandma’s fruit cake and is going around killing the crap out of the hospital’s clientele for some unspecified reason.
In the second movie, Salamin, Angel, her little sister Nina and their sick mother move into a huge, old house (that actually looks pretty cool). The rent is incredibly cheap, maybe because the electricity doesn’t work, but the landlord claims nothing else is wrong with the house, and especially that no one ever died there. Angel and Nina find a mirror in the basement and play a game involving a candle, asking the mirror to show them their future husbands. The mirror does not oblige, but it does open a portal to the afterlife and the future, so ghosts from both the past and future start wandering into the house. In an apparently unrelated incident, Angel learns that the landlord is a big fat liar, and that a woman was attacked by intruders in their house and raped and murdered. Then the intruders come back for Angel, and little Nina has to watch her mom and her sister be killed.
Nina grows up to be a nurse, changes her name to Melissa, and starts killing people in a misguided attempt to regain her dead family.
Wag Kang Lilingon’s main problem is that some of the plot is obscure to the point of not making sense. It’s never quite explained how Melissa’s murders keep her mother’s and sister’s spirits with her. Nor is it made clear how the mirror is letting in spirits from other times, or what that has to do with what happens to Angel and her mother. In one scene, a hospital patient clearly sees some of the resident ghosts, and he appears to die of fright, so how was Melissa responsible for his death? I’m all for a little mystery, but it’s frustrating not to be told basic stuff like that (even beyond the usual cinematic silliness; like how the cops can’t connect a dozen hospital murders to Melissa, or why people keep living in an obviously haunted house).
That said, the movie has some nicely creepy aspects. Uyayi is shot with a greenish camera filter, so all the footage looks like a horror video game. The hospital ghosts are seriously weird: one looks like Heath Ledger’s Joker after being locked up in Arkham Asylum for ten years; another is a naked black man with a scary leer. Salamin has a poltergeist scene that is well-done, culminating in the appearance of another creepy ghost.
Salamin is slowly paced, and you have to wonder why it’s taking so long to get through apparently irrelevant stuff before you reach the end.
The acting is decent, though Anne Curtis, who plays Melissa, needs to lay off the eye shadow and rouge- she’s pretty enough without it.
Recommend-o-meter: The ending is pretty neat, but you have to sit through two hours of mediocrity to get there. If you read this whole review, you can skip the movie entirely since you already know the ending.
| Category: DVD Reviews | Tag: horror, Movie, review, the philippines, wag kang lilingon |
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26 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Penang Bridge is located in Malaysia, and is a national landmark as well as one of the longest bridges in the world. And according to the Owl\’s Ghost Stories website, it’s hella haunted.
The longest bridge in Asia and the third in the world, Penang Bridge connects the island of Penang with the mainland Peninsula Malaysia. Completed in 1985, the construction of the bridge saw seven construction workers killed or drowned. Many believe they then haunt the bridge.
Ever since it is completed, many claimed to have seen ghosts of all types. The coast at the end of the bridge as well as the ‘pillars’ of the bridge is popular among anglers. In the early days, many anglers claimed to have caught a fish with tiny human heads. Some also claimed to have caught a human head on their fishing hook. Many drivers who used the bridge late at night also claimed to have seen ghosts without heads moving along at side of their car. A few others reported seeing a lady in white trying to catch a ride on the middle on the 13.5km bridge. There were many stories about what happened to those who stopped.
Nevertheless, all those were stories of the 80′s. As the traffic volume on the bridge increased tremendously over the years, less and less of such ghosts sighting were reported. Perhaps the people scare the ghost away? I personally have not heard of any new ghost stories about the bridge for a long while until recently.
It was said that if you are driving on the bridge in the middle of the night, when there were not much traffic, you might come across a car that would overtake you at high speed. After overtaking you, it would slow down. If you then overtake the car, you would see a headless driver controlling it.
Another scary story was told to me by my aunt. It happened to a friend of her sister (not related to me). That person, a near-middle age woman, was driving on the bridge about a couple of years ago with her mother by her side. They were on their way home after having dinner at a relative’s place.
That particular night did not seem to be any different from usual. They have been plying the bridge so often and nothing had ever happened. It was near midnight and there were still a lot of cars using the bridge. She was driving at a comfortable speed while keeping an occasional eye on the rear-view mirror as well as the speedometer. Everything seems perfect although they were a bit tired by then. Her mother did not talk much in the car, probably tired after a full day’s outing.
Something very strange happened as she was approaching the middle of the bridge. Through the rear-view mirror, she saw her mother sitting at the car’s back seat. That could not be possible since her mother was sitting on her side. She reckoned she was merely tired and was seeing things. The idea of a ghost never even crossed her mind. She took another look at her rear-view mirror and it was indeed her mother’s reflection that was on the mirror.
Feeling curious, she turned to look at the mother. She saw her mother sitting by her side. However, her face was so pale as if she was very sick. Fearing the worse, she kept asking her mother if she was all right. There was no response from her mother. The old lady just kept quiet. She drove to the emergency stop at the side of the bridge wanting to do something to help her mother. At that moment, she had forgotten about the reflection she just saw. She thought her mother was sick and wanted to see if there’s anything she could do there and then.
Once the car stopped, her mother suddenly opened the door and got out of the car. The lady got scared while wondering what was her mother up to. She quickly took off her seat belt but before she could get out of the car, her mother had jumped off the bridge. Her body was found drowned later. A police investigation reveals that the woman did not pushed her mother down the bridge and it was concluded as a suicide death.
So we have here a sort of pre-death ghost. What will we have tomorrow, in AnaKhouri’s countdown to Halloween? I guess there’s only one way to find out!
| Category: Uncategorized | Tag: ghost story, horror, malaysia, penang bridge, scary |
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23 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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- I’m under your bed, licking your floor
I’ll be out of town until Monday afternoon, but next week will be packed with the last six reviews I need to complete my goal. Also, like I did last year, I’ll be posting a ghost story every day in the week leading up to Halloween!
The Unborn (Thailand, 2003)
I hope I never have to go to a hospital in Thailand. According to The Unborn, they are grimy, cramped, have iron bedsteads (no reclining beds?), have staff who apparently go home as soon as it gets dark, and are crawling with vengeful ghosts. Even the bathrooms in The Unborn look like they haven’t been cleaned in months, and every time the heroine needs help, the corridors are suddenly deserted. And the doctors and nurses are narrow-minded bullies to boot.
The main character in this one is a little edgier than usually Asian horror heroine: Por is a party girl bartender who makes extra cash by selling drugs for a brutal dealer. When she tries to cheat him, he drags her off to a swamp, beats the crap out of her, then tries to drown her. She’s rescued by an unspecified someone and taken to the aforementioned creepy hospital, where she’s shocked to discover she’s ten weeks pregnant. A kindly doctor counsels her to get off the drugs and keep the baby; a nurse refuses to give Por the abortion she wants (!).
While she’s in the hospital, Por starts seeing the apparition of a long-haired, heavily pregnant woman. Is she a symptom of PTSD? Of course not. She’s the ghost of a woman found drowned in the same swamp where Por nearly died, and she seems to want something from Por. She even follows Por home from the hospital. Por sets out to discover what the woman wants, and to give her some peace. The quest takes Por and her best friend and her anti-drug counselor into a nasty case of sorcery and superstition and plain old sordidness. And even after the resolution of the dead woman’s case, the movie keeps going, because there just has to be a twist.
The Unborn indulges in every cliché known to Asian horror: long-haired ghost lady, grimy bathrooms with exposed pipes (not only in the hospital, but in Por’s otherwise nice apartment too), the deserted hospital, the spectral quest for vengeance, the plot twist that’s pretty obvious. There are a couple stylish scenes, as when Por has a hallucination of drowning in the hospital bathroom. But in the horror category The Unborn is nothing we haven’t seen before. There’s not much in the way of gore or special effects, but also not many good old-fashioned scares.
At least it’s nice to see a main female character who’s not a boring good girl who starts seeing ghosts and ends up with the male side character who helps her out. Por is a tough kid, a drug addict with a hip haircut and slutty clothes. I suppose I should have been heart-warmed by her journey from bad girl to loving mommy, but I was actually just sort of disappointed in her. Intira Jaroenpura is very good as Por, but none of the other characters have enough depth to be interesting, not even the ghost, whose story is standard horror fare.
The movie is paced fairly quickly, but is too long and drawn-out; it might have worked as a short film but at nearly two hours, the viewer begins to get bored, especially since the plot is rather predictable. I actually groaned inwardly when the ‘end’ proved not to be the end, making way for the inevitable plot twist. The music is quite well-done, but the creepy atmosphere it creates can’t hold up against the lackluster story and characters.
Recommend-o-meter: If you want a really unnerving Thai horror movie, try Shutter. The Unborn isn’t anything new or special.
| Category: DVD Reviews | Tag: horror, Movie, review, thailand, the unborn |
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16 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Pulse (Japan, 2001)
Entry # 5 in my horror marathon is something a little different: a subtle, low-key film thick with dread, surprisingly non-violent and with only a couple of the usual Asian-horror suspects. Pulse begins as two stories that intersect about three-quarters of the way through the movie.
Michi is a young woman who works at a Tokyo plant shop. One of the other employees, Taguchi, hasn’t come in for several days; supposedly he’s at home, working on something nonspecific that involves a computer disk. When he doesn’t answer his phone, Michi volunteers to go to his apartment, a techno-cave packed with computer equipment. Taguchi greets her without surprise (or any other emotion, really). While Michi digs through the stuff on his desk to find the disk, Taguchi goes into the other room and casually hangs himself.
His co-workers can’t figure out why Taguchi would commit suicide, but there’s a clue of sorts on the disk (though such an obtuse clue that it can hardly be called one): an image of his apartment with his spectral face reflected on the computer screen. Another plant shop worker, Yabe gets a phone call, apparently Taguchi’s voice repeating “Help me.” over and over. He goes to Taguchi’s apartment, but there’s nothing there but an odd black stain on the wall where Taguchi died. However, a neighboring door is sealed shut with red tape. Since this is a horror movie, of course Yabe goes inside to investigate. What he sees renders him so despondent that he completely loses the will to live and simply disappears.
Meanwhile, Michi witnesses another suicide (What are the chances? Well, actually getting better all the time). Doors sealed with red tape are popping up all over the city. Those whose curiosity gets the better of them end up committing suicide or vanishing. Michi’s too smart for that, and she tries to save her other co-worker Junko, who goes to Yabe’s apartment. But she too disappears. When everyone she cares about has vanished, Michi climbs into her absurdly tiny car and starts driving, looking for other survivors.
The parallel storyline involves Kawashima, a congenial slacker college student who decides to get on the Internet (using dial-up, good Lord…) and who doesn’t believe in ghosts. But his computer automatically connects to a webcam image of a guy with a bag over his head, the words “Help me” scrawled over and over on the wall behind him, with the text, “Do you want to meet a ghost?” Every time he connects (and sometimes when he doesn’t) the computer shows the same webcam images. He goes to his school’s computer lab for help, but the resident expert, a willowy girl named Harue, has no explanation. Another student, supposedly a computer genius, does. His theory is that the afterlife has filled up (a variation on, “When Hell is full the dead shall walk the Earth.”) and the deceased souls are spilling over into the living world, somehow slipping through Internet connections.
Kawashima ends up drifting through a rapidly emptying Tokyo, where he runs into Michi. They team up to find Harue, but she’s had her own ghostly encounter, and by the time they find her, it’s too late. Kawashima has a run-in with a ghost, which seriously puts a cramp in their search for other survivors.
As long as you don’t think too hard about the premise (Internet ghosts? Really?) Pulse is a chilling story with philosophical overtones; the characters discuss the existence of the human soul, what happens to it after death and what the afterlife is like. The attitude of the ghosts suggests that the afterlife sucks. It’s a realm of eternal loneliness, and by confronting the living and depressing the Hell out of them, they are spitefully spreading the misery. Or maybe they want them to die so they have more company. Or they may not mean to drive people to despair at all. Nothing is ever explained definitively, so Pulse keeps the viewer thinking long after the movie ends.
The film is sodden with understated atmosphere: from the beginning, camera filters give everything a vaguely grimy appearance. The movie does pull out that most tired of Asian horror clichés: the long-haired, menacing female ghost, but only s couple times. The most disturbing scenes show the depopulated streets of Tokyo, Michi in a deserted convenience store, Kawashima alone in a formerly bustling arcade with only a specter for company. Nothing is more unsettling than seeing the haunts of mankind devoid of people. Inexplicably, Tokyo is full of burning cars, and Michi sees a military plane crash (is there WiFi on military planes?). two unnecessary and distracting apocalyptic touches that interrupt the otherwise understated creepiness.
The ghosts themselves are almost all equally subtle (long-haired dead ladies aside), and the black stains that form on walls where people have died or disappeared are reminiscent of the burned-in shadows of Hiroshima.
Recommend-o-meter: if you don’t try to understand it too much, Pulse is a weird, disturbing movie that will keep you puzzling for at least a couple hours.
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13 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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This review contains mega-spoilers. You have been warned!
Inner Senses (Hong Kong, 2002)
Most horror movies have that one scene where the main character tries to tell someone about the ghost/demon/monster/killer, only to be told they’re crazy. Of course, the main character invariably ends up being right: there is a ghost/demon/monster/killer out there. Except in Inner Senses. In this film, it turns out that the main character really is just crazy.
That main character is Yan, a young woman who sees dead people. She’s just rented a new apartment after breaking up with her last boyfriend. Surprise, the joint is crawling with ghosts. There’s gaunt old men and creepy shadows and the landlord’s dead wife and son. At the urging of her cousin, Yan goes to see eminent psychologist Jim Law, who confidently explains away paranormal experiences with psychobabble. Jim doesn’t believe Yan is actually seeing spirits, but he lets her think he does. Their relationship grows close, but Jim can’t get involved with a patient. After he rejects her, Yan tries to kill herself. Yan’s cousin rather belatedly explains that every time Yan gets dumped by a guy, she starts ‘seeing’ ghosts and tries to off herself (leading the striking subtitle, “She likes to commit suicide.”).
So Jim helps Yan work through her issues, the ‘ghosts’ vanish, she’s discharged and, since her case is closed, they can start dating. Everyone’s happy. The end.
…well, not quite.
Jim is bashed over the head by an old lady in a random attack. Except, with a little investigating, he finds it wasn’t random at all. He’s been repressing a painful memory for decades; back in high school, his super-possessive girlfriend Yue killed herself after he broke up with her. The old lady is Yue’s mother, who still blames Jim for her daughter’s death. Once the memory is dredged up, it’s all over: Yue’s bloody specter starts following him everywhere. Finally she drives Jim to a skyscraper rooftop, where he has a choice: help Yue (and his own tormented mind) find peace, or jump.
While Yan is definitely hallucinating, the movie makes no obvious judgment on Jim, though the fact that Yue didn’t show up until after his memory was revived points to the fact that he is also nuts. What are the odds?
Much has been made of Inner Senses due to the fact that it was superstar Leslie Cheung’s final movie before his death. The film’s persistent themes of suicide, and in particular the scene of Jim on the roof, are uncomfortable when taken in context: Cheung died the year after this movie was made, jumping to his death from a Hong Kong roof. His performance in Inner Senses isn’t his best (look for Farewell, My Concubine to see that), but his acting is solid and believable. Karena Lam as Yan isn’t quite as good; you never really get the sense that she’s as hysterical as she acts. But she’s not bad.
Inner Senses has some nicely chilling scenes, as when Yan is standing in her new apartment and looks up to see a man-shaped shadow in the hall that vanishes when she looks away and back again. Yue looks a bit silly in zombie makeup and a schoolgirl uniform, but her ghastly, mocking grin is pretty effective. The couple uses of CGI aren’t believable and should have been jettisoned from the final cut.
The ending of Inner Senses is interesting; apparently, all you need to get rid of a vengeful spirit is to make her remember all the good times you shared. It doesn’t feel quite satisfying that Yue gives up so easily, but I suppose it makes sense if Jim is just loony.
Recommend-o-meter: Leslie Cheung fans will probably want to see it just because, but horror fans will also find it interesting, if only for the twist of the ghosts not being ghosts. It’s worth your 90 minutes.
| Category: DVD Reviews | Tag: Hong Kong, horror, inner senses, leslie cheung, movie review |
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9 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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3 down…10 more to go!
Dorm (Thailand, 2004)
Dorm has a lot in common with Guillermo del Toro’s 2001 movie The Devil’s Backbone. Both are set in a boys’ school. In both, the characters are haunted by the death of a fellow student, and both films rely heavily on atmosphere rather than outright scares. And, as in del Toro’s film, Dorm ends up not being a horror movie at all, despite appearances.
Ton is a lanky twelve-year-old. He’s obsessed with watching television and is slacking in his studies. His father uses this as an excuse to ship him off to boarding school, but the real reason for Ton’s banishment is that he caught his dad doing the horizontal tango with a woman who isn’t Ton’s mom.
Boarding school is tough and lonely, especially since Ton is already feeling bitter and resentful. His first night there he’s accosted by the school’s resident misfits, who regale him with stories of a veritable army of ghosts that haunt the place. They leave Ton so spooked that he wets the bed, which only makes his situation worse.
Things get better when Ton meets Vichien, who befriends him. But in one startling moment Ton discovers that only one of the ghost stories he heard is true – Vichien is the ghost of a boy who committed suicide by drowning himself in the school’s old swimming pool. This doesn’t prove a barrier to their friendship, however. Ton spends most of his free time apparently alone, but really hanging out with Vichien, who is as active and mischievous as any live boy. They play video games, sneak out, and ogle a cute cafeteria worker. Vichien even shows Ton where he hit his stash of porn when he was alive. But he won’t reveal the particulars of how he died or why, or what connection his death has to the school’s creepy headmistress.
But as much as Ton enjoys his time with his new friend, he knows Vichien’s spirit belongs in the afterlife. On the advice of an occult-minded classmate, Ton undertakes a dangerous ritual to find out what really happened, and to help his friend find peace. The ending is a bit neat, with Ton helping Vichien and the headmistress, reconciling with his father, befriending the outcasts and deciding he really likes school.
At first, Dorm has all the hallmarks of a horror movie: empty corridors, doors that slam and lock on their own, a chorus of stray dogs that howl outside a certain window every night. Ton has a serious oversleeping problem, which leads to very creepy scenes of him running out of the vast, empty bunk room, or washing alone in the echoing bathroom (some of the scenes, however, attempt to be creepy by being so dimly lit you can’t tell what’s going on). The film is drained of color, with a grimy feel that is becoming more and more popular in horror movies.
But the horror dissipates as soon as the ghost reveals himself. Vichien isn’t out for revenge, as so many Asian ghosts are. He just wants a buddy. And that’s the real story of Dorm: a tale of boyhood friendship and childish devotion. The scenes with Ton and Vichien hanging out, doing kid stuff, are touching and enjoyable (and afford me a glimpse of Gohan’s future years).
The child actors are about as good as you can expect; Chintara Sukapatana as the disturbed headmistress floats through the movie looking pale and tragic.
Recommend-o-meter: If you’re in the mood for a straight-up horror movie, skip this one. Otherwise, Dorm is worth a look.
| Category: DVD Reviews | Tag: cinema, dorm, horror, thailand |
