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THREE
(2002)
Reviewed
by Rob Daniel
While
never threatening the feature length film, the horror
anthology is a sub-genre that has steadfastly clung onto life.
Usually the first victim of the horror anthology is
quality; for every 'Dead of Night' we have 'Creepshow', 'The
Monster Club' and 'Tales from the Crypt'.
But,
Asian horror cinema has proved more adept at transferring the
short story tradition to the big screen, most notably with the
(over-rated) 'Kwaidan' (1964).
Shan-si Tung's 'Yinyang Jie' (Blood Reincarnation -
1974) is arguably more impressive, and the late nineties saw
the tradition flourishing with 'Mei Mong Leung' (Nightmare
Zone – 1998), the delightfully titled 'Faces of Horrid'
(1998) and the 'Troublesome Night' series.
In
2002 Asian horror anthologies went ambitiously upmarket with
'Three'. Uniting
three high profile Asian directors, 'Three' gives them free
reign to explore life’s darkest regions, unfettered by
linking stories or narrator.
Disappointingly, despite this freedom only Hong Kong
director Peter Chan's 'Going Home' impresses.
Ji-woon Kim and Nonzee Nimibutr, representing Korea and
Thailand respectively, prove unable to adapt to the short
story format.
After
suitably unsettling opening credits, 'Three' opens with Kim's
episode 'Memories'. For
audiences unfamiliar with 'Ring' or any other Asian horror
movie of the past five years, 'Memories' will be an effective
little chiller. But,
reliance on a jerky, shuffling woman, face obscured by black
hair and an arsenal of false shocks has become lazy horror
shorthand.
The
story is sufficiently intriguing for the short film format: a
man’s wife has disappeared and all efforts to find her prove
futile. The woman awakens, amnesiac, in a quiet street
and attempts to get home.
But, both wife and husband are plagued by terrible
visions, most notably the man witnessing his spouse
inquisitively probing a gaping head wound.
Writer/Director
Kim debuted with the wonderfully askew 'The Quiet Family'
(which in turn inspired Takashi Miike's unforgettable 'The
Happiness of the Katakuris') and has enjoyed recent success
with 'A Tale of Two Sisters'.
Here he shoots with a keen eye for dreamy, disquieting
imagery, but his script is surprisingly derivative and
guessable, making 'Memories' ultimately forgettable.
Which
applies tenfold to Nimibutr's 'The Wheel', whose sophomore
movie, the first class horror film 'Nang Nak', is rapidly
becoming a one-off wonder.
Now Nimibutr is more often donning a producer’s hat,
recently producing 'The Eye 2'.
A
grim tale of cursed puppets seems a sure fire shocker (think
Michael Redgrave in 'Dead of Night' or Anthony Hopkins in
'Magic') and the bare bones story of 'The Wheel' is diverting:
revered puppet shows can bring great acclaim and fortune to
the puppet master, but beware those who try to use others'
puppets for their own gain; the mannequins can prove vengeful.
Tao, a theatre manager, scoffs at such warnings and
watches impotently as his avarice unleashes murder and madness
in a riverside village.
Nimibutr
crams his story (he is one of the film's three writers) with
unimportant secondary characters and events.
What should be Tao's descent into madness as greed
blights his life focuses instead on a young boy with knowledge
of the curse, teen romance and a young girl who is the
puppets' conduit for evil.
Here
lies the fatal flaw; young moppets will never be as uncannily
spooky as dead-eyed mannequins.
Yet Nimibutr barely affords his chief villains a
mid-shot, yet alone that effortlessly scary lingering
close-up. Had he
never seen 'Child's Play'? One
saving grace is 'Nang Nak's DP Nattawat Kittikhun photography,
foregrounding forebodingly fiery reds (two characters perish
in flames) and dirty browns that lend the riverside locale an
authentically earthy feel.
Maybe
too much symbolism is lost on Western eyes, but flaws
transcend culture and the cop-out ending leaves 'The Wheel'
decidedly buckled.
So
Peter Chan's 'Going Home' is left to prove the adage, always
save the best for last.
'Going Home' realizes the constraints of the short film
format and quickly reduces its cast to three players in a
single apartment.
Confidently
wrong-footing the audience with early 'Shining' and 'Don't
Look Now' inspired scares permits some genuine later surprises
as the real story unfolds.
Wai (HK favourite Tsang) moves into a
soon-to-be-condemned apartment block with his shy, nervous
son. The
apartment block is abandoned save for the caretaker, a husband
and wife and a girl in a red coat; Wai is clearly down on his
luck.
When
his son goes missing with the girl in red, Wai calls into the
couple's apartment and finds the wife (Yuan) dead in the
bathtub, and is taken by hostage by the husband, Yu Fai (Leon
Lai), a doctor whose beliefs in the power of Chinese herbal
remedies run to the unusual.
'Going
Home' can be read allegorically as depicting contemporary Hong
Kong, the building representing the island.
The only men in the building are all public servants,
but all are seemingly failing at their jobs.
The doctor and his wife are Mainlanders distraught at
the Westernised Hong Kong that cannot remember the power of
tradition.
The
four writers (Teddy Chan, Matt Chow, Jo Jo Hui and Chao-bin
Su) and director Chan realize the potential for
experimentation in the short film format, and believably
handle bizarre characters and ideas.
Plus, despite being the most effectively chilling of
the three shorts, 'Going Home' contains a final twist that
transforms it into less of a horror film than the first two
episodes.
Honorary
Hong Konger Christopher Doyle brings his usual expertise to
the film's look, conveying decay and melancholy with green and
grey filters, while Tsang and Lai's nuanced performances make
this an unconventional two-hander in the same vein as 'The
Servant'.
Peter
Chan added approximately four minutes of material to 'Going
Home' so it could be released stand-alone.
This segment garnered 10 nominations at the 2003 Hong
Kong Film Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay
and Actor, and won Best Newcomer for Eugenia Yuan.
For an excellent breakdown of the additional material,
check out the So
Good… Hong Kong film site.
'Three'
is a bold idea, but one out of three is too bad.
The follow-up, 'Three...
Extremes' would do it all
better.
Memories
:  
The
Wheel :
Going
Home :
Overall
Rating :
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