The Eye 10 (aka The Eye Infinity, Jian gui 10, 2005)

The Eye 10 is the third movie of The Eye series and stars a cast of relatively unknowns; which strangely reminds me of every other "I Know What You Did Last Summer"-like line-up ever employed and immortalized in one movie or another.

A group of Thai friends get together, most from Bangkok, travel to a rural Thai village to meet another friend who sort of leads them on a sight-seeing trip through the Thai countryside. On the return trip, they hop a bus that passes by an accident on the roadside. They witness, and one of them films, a dead body lying under a blanket, surrounded by police who are reconstructing the scene and directing traffic. Later that night, they gather in the living-room of their host, Tak, and begin telling ghost stories. No one is having any luck with their stories, so Tak introduces an ancient storybook called "10 Ways to See a Ghost". In it, are 10 methods to conjure a ghost's presence. After some reluctance, they agree to begin exploring them one by one, to varying degrees of success.

The central theme of the movie takes off after they've tried a few, and move on to a game of hide-and-seek; played at midnight, while the 'seeker' hunts for the rest of the group while carrying a black cat. This method is the most effective so far and one of the group, namely Ko Fai, vanishes, without a trace. The police are brought in, but to no avail. They'll have to rely on the remaining methods in the book and Tak's mother's expertise as a kind of spiritual adviser to find Ko Fai.

The first thing that I will say, is that The Eye 10 isn't very good at all. What it is, is mildly entertaining. Well, there's no way to get around it. Somewhat because of the Pang Brother's cheesy brand of humor, but mainly because of the infusion of Thai folklore/mythology. In particular, a scene in a Bangkok apartment building where a possessed young man provokes a break-dancing showdown with two local punks in an upper hallway. I laughed so hard, but I've never felt so ashamed for doing so. Now for the bad. For starters, the story is barely believable, and the 10 methods from the book are a tad wacky and, in terms of the film's layout, they're told in a heavily disjointed and episodic manner. The folklore angle does puts a nice shine on them though. As far as the story-line, it was linear, but came across as jumbled or on-the-fly. No weight to it. So much so, that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a Carrot Top cameo or a 'Thriller-like' choreographed number. Not the way I like my horror.

Eye 10 isn't so much the second sequel to The Eye as it's a spin-off, in my opinion. I have a feeling it took some finessing to manage a germane link the audience would buy. Other than the title of course. In the end, there are some eerily effective scenes, (as short-lived as they are), and two or three genuine shocks. I wouldn't turn to The Eye 10 for a horror fix though. In that regard, it's wholly disappoints and comically underachieves.

The Locker (Shibuya Kaidan, 2005)

* spoilers ahead *

Kei Horie's Shibuya Kaidan, a.k.a. "The Locker", is decidedly a new run with the flavors of a few old favorites of Asian Horror; built around the premise of a small bank of public pay lockers in Shibuya District, which hold a horrific secret. Just south of famed Harijuku, Shibuya is a perfect locale for our clique of callow friend's that return from a weekend camping trip and visit that bank of lockers. The girls in the group routinely store books and clothing in them, as it's proximity to home and campus make for lighter travel between the two points.

While in the country, the six friends (3 ladies, 3 gents) consume a beer or two and attempt to tell ghost stories, which fall completely flat and digress into roaring laughter . It's quite the light-hearted night with friends. (And I laughed also because I could identify; I think we all can.) Things get going when one of the group, Keitarou (Yuge Tomohisa), takes the opportunity to scare the hell out of the group with a stone infants head he finds when our protagonist, Reika (Mizukawa Asami; grown-up Ikuko in Dark Water), had just heard faint crying near the adjacent lake. But she was the only one. Reika pleads with the group to listen for the cries, and as they concentrate, Keitarou produces the stone head which sends the group into screams. Even Keitarou couldn't believe his fortune on this prank. The next morning, on the return trip, another of the group suddenly hears those same faint cries, and upon their return (and subsequent visit to Shibuya), he and another girl disappear. A week later, they're found... but it's not pretty. Soon, the haunting escalates and the entire group faces a disturbing, and sometimes wacky, fate. But those wacky moments pass fairly quickly. Reason being, the characters themselves don't seem to be affected by them.

After two more of the group are killed or missing, the remaining trio of friend's make the association between the deaths, the locker in Shibuya and a certain sacred site that one or more of them had unknowingly desecrated. Just as they prepare an attempt to satisfy the spirit's wrath, their friend is found slumped over in a playground by a very young boy and she's taken to a hospital to recover. The police and doctors monitor her for any signs of improvement, so as to collect information about how and why she came to rest, comatose, in a city park. This is where it gets quite a bit better and makes up ground from the previous half, in terms of genuine scares. A major factor is the spine-cringing sound effects and to maybe an equal extent, a nice bit of editing near the end. The direction as a whole takes a huge step up here also. The camera work goes back & forth between Blair Witch-esque handy-cam to full-on classic Asian Horror style, but at all the right moments. And by this point, it settles into a nice groove. The remaining members of the group face their own fates. One of the group follows the trail back to the Shibuya Locker.

The things that work for this movie is the B-movie feel, the way it doesn't pound us over the head with intensity (it's really not that type of film), and the genuine urban-folklore angle. Similar to a famed, particular bathroom stall haunted by a young woman, this lore has enough weight to carry the movie. Those, and a couple wicked-nice scares and one pretty freaky scene midway through. What worked against it? Several aspects. In particular, a laundry list of familiar elements that quite a few other Asian Horror classics gave birth to and often suffering from being wholly unoriginal altogether. I'm also pretty sure the producers choice to go direct-to-video was partly due to the 'imitation factor'. In the end though, I found it entirely entertaining as a whole. The Locker is a film that has to be appreciated as a "sum of it's parts" type movie. As Herman Yau's Dating Death ('04) has to be. It has a little of everything, and as a viewer, I was kept on my toes and never bored and it's put together well. I couldn't ask for much more. I'll also relay my disappointed at the distribution company's choice for it's original release DVD cover. I think it spoils the movie a little. The Region 1 cover makes amends though. So finally, my score is probably one or two points higher than it should be, but there it is. Have fun with this movie, and you'll be fine.