(2001)
Dir - Masato Harada
Overall: MEH
Though it underplays its horror elements and goes for an out-of-time folkloric aura to its contemporary and isolated setting, writer/director Masato Harada's Inugami gets lost in its details and overstays its welcome. An adaptation of Masako Bando's novel which features haunted woods, a dog god and/or some form of dog spirits, a family curse, incest, babies getting switched at birth, ghosts, a woman growing younger as she becomes romantically involved with an out-of-towner, angry villagers, rituals, and a major who brags about killing nine-hundred and ninety-nine animals, there is clearly too much going on. Unfortunately, the drama suffered by a barrage of charters never becomes compelling despite some dedicated and often amped-up performances. This is simply, (or confusingly), because the more layers that get revealed, the more exhausting the experience is. Harada makes some stylistic choices that are interesting on paper, (a whole sequence filmed in black and white, characters telling stories about their past that are shown on screen in the same shot as them, some artful sex scenes, a rare and digitally-enhanced supernatural moment that arrives abruptly about an hour in, etc), but it all becomes too bloated to stay invested in.
(2002)
Dir - Law Chi-leung
Overall: MEH
Hong Kong filmmaker Law Chi-leung takes on some heady yet ultimately formulaic psychological spookshow terrain with Inner Senses, (Yee dou hung gaan). Gradually shifting its focus between one character to another, we are presented with two different individuals who are susceptible to supernatural torment via their own debilitating traumatic hangups. Karena Lam is a shy recluse who felt neglected by her parents to the point where she developed her own crippling sense of non-existent self-esteem, while her psychiatrist Leslie Cheung seems to offer a calm and level-headed means of support, only he also suffers from his less than ideal past which only come to the surface once his patient/now girlfriend seems to finally have her own issues under control. The pacing is unhurried, and long portions go by without any horror movie trappings whatsoever. While this fleshes out the characters plenty and makes Cheung's eventual personality transformation less sudden than it would otherwise appear, the whole thing still results in a melodramatic and simple-minded watch. There are also loud and insultingly obnoxious violin screeches early on whenever the unwanted specters show up, and overall the genre elements are hackneyed at best. Still, Lam and Cheung are likeable and turn in sufficient performances for what it is worth.
(2008)
Dir - Sophon Sakdapisit
Overall: WOOF
A moronic hack job from screenwriter-turned-first-time-director Sophon Sakdapisit, Coming Soon, (Program na winyan akat), barrels through its lazy vengeful spirit cliches in a consistently uninspired manner. This is a film that is loaded with clever ideas...that were only clever the first time they were done in better movies and not so much in such a cherry-picked setting as done so here. We have a psyche-out "movie within a movie" opening scene, characters witnessing inexplicable supernatural events and keeping them to themselves, the obligatory visit to a remote village to uncover the diabolical mystery, a twist that a six year-old could see coming, boatloads of blaring violin swells on the soundtrack whenever characters are slowly investigating dark areas and/or whenever ghosts pop up to go "boo", and even a lone sequence where the main protagonist gets stuck in a time loop for no reason that is ever remotely set up or explained. The characters seem miserable and are played by actors who are putting in enough effort to nab a paycheck and hit all of the bog standard emotional beats, but the abysmal results are hardly their fault. Sakdapisit has crafted a horror movie for horror fans, but his lack of frightening ideas and inability to deliver them in any unique fashion renders this a sure-fire waste of time.
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