Lhorn (Soul, 2003)

Lhorn is a foursome of tales from Thai folklore. Each tale supposedly comes from a different region of Thailand. Nothing as vanilla as The Singing Apes of Thailand or The Story of Bukit Merah, but four nightmarish tales of horror.

Lhorn, or "Soul", in actuality, has a macro story-line where a group of twenty-somethings (namely Dech, Fah, Dao, Krit, Manao, Toob, Uab and a couple friends) are recruited to assist Dech in restoring a large traditional-style Thai manor, which he has recently inherited. As we get to know the group through they're own introductions, we learn that most of them have a field of expertise that will help Dech with a required appraisal needed before renovations can begin. Some of the group are just tagging along. As they settle in at the house for the night, Manao's book of folklore becomes fodder as they wind the evening down. She has been engrossed in it all afternoon, so after some mild prodding from her girlfriends, Manao agrees to share a few of the tales.

** mild spoilers **

First up is the story that is closest to actual horror out of the four, imo; the 'Paup Ghost'. The premise is solid as far a horror goes: a carnivorous spirit is seen late one night, by a pair of fisherman, devouring the insides of a live animal. The following day, the village residents march to the village chief's house and demand he do something about this paup ghost that's been killing their animals. When they notice the demon entering the home of a small family after surprising it in a field another night, a witch doctor is summoned to that home to expel the demon from a most unlikely place.

The 'Paup Ghost' story has it's tense moments, although few and far between. But it does manage to stay even as a whole. The transition from the main (macro) story packs a bit of a shock in and of itself, and the dark tones & "peek-a-boo" style camera work (made famous by so many Japanese classics) teases us as the paup creeps in and out of view.

We briefly snap back to "the present" where Mamao is begged to spin another yarn:

The second tale has Den, a young man, renting a house near a large banana field. A house large enough for him and his soon-to-be-bride Sao, as well as to throw and bake pottery. Shortly after moving in, Den begins to have dreams of a young woman seducing him in the night as he sleeps. This "episode" takes place almost entirely at night and is very dark, visually. Content-wise, it's fairly short and pretty tame.

Again, we're brought back to the house. And again Manao regales those of the group who haven't either gone to bed or scampered off to get frisky. She tells the story of the Pong Ghost. This one is a lot like the Paup Ghost story but minus the animal eating.

This is where it gets quite a bit edgier and a tad more interesting. The final tale, is about a young servant woman who, after having been caught having an affair with her employer's (husband ?), is fired, promptly follow and raped to death by three young local men and buried under the so-called 'Takien Tree'. This tale simultaneously takes place in the past. We see the intertwining time lines playing off each other as the folklore surreptitiously enters the present.

Overall, I would hazard a guess that someone more familiar with Thai folklore may like this movie more than I did. It seemed flat and, in a few spots, boring. Each "act" was played very tight to the vest, so that even the genuinely scary parts couldn't balance the movie. The worst part of the film is the horrifically out of sync dialogue. The traditional music and (most) sound effects are perfectly utilized and in time, but the vocal overdubbing lags by a second or two. It's tough to tell if this continues throughout the movie because I was too busy trying to catch the English subtitles before they hastily disappeared. A minor flaw in the dvd that could stand to be corrected.

Soul does have a unique look to it and the cinematography holds it's own among horror film. One thing that struck me immediately was the lack of electric lighting and what a challenge is must have been to film the action and yet allow it to retain it's "naturalness". With the only light sources (seemingly) being a lantern or two, a few torches or the eerily bright moon, Soul ingeniously uses devices like fog to help reflect and magnify the scarce quantities of light. It's might be worth checking out for the unique format or the cool interplay between the final tale and the main story-line, but in the end, Soul was just too drawn out and lacked the punch of more interesting horror I've come to enjoy.

Shinjuku Triad Society (Shinjuku kuroshakai: Chaina mafia senso, 1995)

The scene is a rather familiar mixture of police versus yakuza, but shot at street level, with a gritty lens. It essentially begins with the murder of a police informer, who's found dismembered, lying in the street. The scene is a frenzied one, with passers-by horning in on the crime scene, investigators combing the crown for someone who can translate a witness's statements, and beat cops who pose for candid photos with the severed head! The entire film spans mostly Taiwanese & Japanese locales, Triad & Yakuza territories, and a multitude of dialects surrounding the Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese gangsters. In fact, the language barriers (or more precisely, the languages themselves) are nearly characters in and of themselves. Even the police get wrapped up by it.

After a violent and multifaceted beginning, the film becomes clearer; the Chinese-born Kiriya is a Japanese cop who becomes obsessed with saving his younger brother's future as a lawyer, while Yoshihito (the younger brother) has agreed to help in an "illegal" underground organ harvesting program the Yakuza and Triads have been conducting. The Chinese police know about it, but they consider two willing parties as a legit deal, 'Who has been wronged?', they say. Kiriya is sent to China to investigate the organ-harvesting case, but uses most of the time to investigate Wang, the head of a syndicate, who has employed Yoshihito as council/intermediary. The film definitely has a gritty, 1980's feel to it, and catches the far east gangster scene at the height of it's power and brutality. Nobody is safe, no one is untouchable.

I don't presume to "get" everything going on here, there's so many facets to a society I've never known, but Miike does a great job at parsing the dynamics/motivations of every character; even if they don't have a major role. Be it a drugged-up, strung-out whore who ultimately wants to live a normal life, or a Japanese officer who cares deeply for his Chinese parents that speak no Japanese and feel lost in the country they now live. One of those is a major character, and one is a minor one...but both lives are illuminated sufficiently. If I had to mention a negative, it would be that there's just so much jammed into the film that it was pulled in too many directions. The up-side is that it never became convoluted. Another would be, and I don't know if Miike did it for show/shock, but the movie is packed with loads of sex between the gangsters themselves or the gangsters and a couple of androgynous man-children. The police even use ass-rape as an interrogation tactic. He lost me there. Still, a great early Miike film and a must see.

Ichi 1 (1-Ichi, 2003)

Masato Tanno's '1-ICHI' is the live action prequel (as opposed to Shinji Ishidaira's animated Koroshiya 1: Episode 0) to Takashi Miike's full feature film, Ichi The Killer. In it, we get to witness the teenage roots of Ichi's manic-depressive beginnings and the origins of his monster-sized kicks. Tanno serves up Ichi's psychological, as well as physical beatings.

It opens as Dai (played by Teah) is putting the hurt on three local thugs and notices a fellow student Shiroishi/Ichi (Nao Omori) watching him intently and smiling at him from a walking bridge in the distance. This immediately ticks Dai off, as Dai isn't one to take anything lightly or as chance. He's determined to be the baddest guy around, and he's doing a fine job at it. Dai and his friends head home afterward to relax and eat. Dai is so focused and regimented that he only allows himself a certain amount of time to finish eating; he actually uses an egg-timer! Dai becomes obsessed and a little unnerved with Shiroishi, as he's always showing up to watch him fight (although we only see this a couple times) and believes that he's passively challenging his strength and dominance. Dai has had enough of Shiroishi's lurking and begins tracking him down. But not single-mindedly. He runs into Shiroishi as he's being pushed around by some thugs from another school and when Shiroishi refuses to defend himself, Dai actually jumps in the middle to ask him why he doesn't fight back. He doesn't lose his urge to crush Shiroishi, but becomes fascinated with him at the same time.

But before he can pull the proverbial trigger, a new student comes to school to complicate things. Onizame, a master of Hop Ki Do (a Korean discipline), brilliantly played by Koji Chihara, wastes no time in proclaiming himself king by first "winning over" Dai's friend's girlfriend by busting him up right there in the classroom upon arrival. which eventually leads to a phenomenally brutal ending to 1-ICHI, which is reminiscent of Ichi The Killer's famous final scenes. I'll spare a complete recap of anything further because you'll want to see it for yourself.

1-ICHI is a lightning fast 83 minutes but does a fine job in it's mission to explain Ichi's beginnings. Considering Tanno and his crew ran into time constraints immediately before shooting began (via the interview with Tanno and Miike on the DVD) the film is surprisingly fluid and cogent; what's there is there, and even though I wanted to, I couldn't argue with the character's motives or the extremely myopic and carefully constructed world. There is never an instant of 1-ICHI's world being fake or contrived, even when you begin to notice that there are never any authorities around or teachers present as the kids fight for lengthy periods of time; inside the classroom! I would hesitate to call it an incomplete or half-hearted effort as well. The world we see in the film is unique and self-sustaining, What's more, little things like Dai's friend Hide's penchant for watching only the third installment of a movie series, Exorcist 3, Godfather 3, Let's Ride The Pervert Train 3, because, as Hide puts it, "the third one tends to be self-explanatory, so it's easier to follow.", gives the film a quirky, likable edge and weight.

1-ICHI is not for the faint of heart though. You'll see (and hear) some brutally realistic, bone-breaking fights and some borderline sadistic behavior. Some of the earlier fights are on he cheesy side which directly oppose the latter's carnage. What you will also witness is the makings of Ichi's sexual excitement for violence; from simple erections to moments of release. Very graphic stuff here folks. This isn't just violent, blood-soaked brutality and CGI amputations as in Miike's cult classic. It may be low-budget, but it has a ton of character and by the end I was convinced that it dovetails nicely with Miike's film.

The Heirloom (Zhaibian, 2005)

The godsend known as Tartan Asian Extreme delivers Leste Chen's inaugural effort The Heirloom to North America, yet this real live throwback to American's slasher past doesn't arrive as one their most savory releases. Welcome, yes — good, not exactly. Surprising since all of the elements are there (no bare–breasted twenty–somethings), but the semi–pedestrian direction and slasher formula are. At issue is the presence of misplaced long–winded explanation–based dialogue. The movie isn't that complex...

A secluded house teaming with young professionals (as opposed to absent–minded lovable losers) plays host to Chen's plat homage, where a guy inherits a somewhat dilapidated house and soon a mysterious force begins to plague the he and his freinds. The single intriguing aspect of this movie involves the 'mysterious force' which moves people from one place to another (purposely vague), but this is a short–lived feature. Although it may seem early on that Heirloom is on the right track, but as time moves on there's little chance of it redeeming itself. However, the chance of it accidentally transforming into an unofficial spin–off  of the Friday the 13th series was high. Heirloom isn't woefully bad, it's just nothing we haven't seen before.

Theeviravaathi (The Terrorist, 1998)

In 2000 (a la Quentin Tarantino), actor extraordinaire John Malkovich introduced a lesser-known Indian film surrounding the 'martyrdom' of real life Tamil Tiger, Thenmuli Rajaratnam, of Sri Lanka's LTTE guerilla forces. The 19-year-old suicide bomber (she was reportedly 17 according to LTTE), Malli (so-called in the film) is the envy of her peers as young women and men alike battle the Indian military, who are occupying Sri Lanka as part of a larger "peace-keeping" effort during India's real-life Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's reformationist rule. Malli uses her Kaiser Soze-like disposition to win a coveted role as the person who will "sacrifice [her] future for the sake of [her] people" by suiciding at the feet of the arriving Prime Minister.

To save the reader from hackneyed, peer-reviewed hyperbole or dittoed parallels with today's (and past) Mideast tensions, I'll simply say Terrorist is a rather subdued, but cogent look at a young (dare I say, impressionable) girl who chooses to become a hero for her cause, to her people, and for her country. Malli's personal awakening, through several flashbacks, makes up a vast majority of the film's content and is appropriately signaled with Malli's proximity to water, in one form or another. The water detail is a major but evident one; and it's played nicely. As a final note, and after a historical comparison, the film does stray a little from actual events but it's a diversion which agrees with me. My guess is that most would agree.

Zodiac (2007)

Whether in stark contrast to the dreck of a lot of modern movies (a slight over-exaggeration) or simply a modern masterwork, David Fincher unleashed his nearly 3-hour reference gem, Zodiac, on the unsuspecting public this weekend. Robert Downey Jr. is The Chronicle's crime reporter, Jake Gyllenhaal is recognizable as the real-life Zodiac expert Robert Graysmith, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards (of ER fame) take center stage, upon their arrivals, as the real-life inspectors David Toschi and William Armstrong. These two draw the short straws (in retrospect) when a series of letters to the San Francisco Chronicle become to much for the editors of the paper to handle. Ruffalo is brilliant as the grounded, realistic lead inspector who wants to act but is bound by procedure. In fact, the entire cast (supporting and otherwise) hold steady as Zodiac's time line stretches beyond the decade. In particular, Downey Jr.'s character is quite the spectacle. [As an aside, I've come up with a concept that this character can be easily extrapolated into the dystopian future of A Scanner Darkly, where Downey portrays a drug-soaked schizo, who's "fall" might have very well begun in ways portrayed here! I humor myself....sue me.] Fincher's direction, per usual, is off the charts good.

Not only does Fincher capture, with mind-boggling accuracy, every aspect of the given "era" (I wasn't around then...in the interest of full disclosure), and he spins such a wise and sober yarn as to almost be bland or unsavory (have you read Journal of the Plague Year?). It's certainly not cool (although claiming to be un-cool has long been a way of doing so). Fincher simply presents well-established facts and long-held notions that the case was bungled from the beginning. What's more is, sworn testimony offers evidence that The "Zodiac killer" was well aware of, and seemed to invite, an investigation. What compelled me to see the film twice in two days was Fincher's genius, almost diabolical pacing.

Two other films immediately came to mind which seem to pen the film itself as a character to be considered. With Zodiac, the real life murderer's spree was marked with fits & starts, with long intervals of stagnation (ditto for the investigation). As the investigation makes way for dead ends and glimmers of hope, Fincher's departures from the investigation, into the characters lives (a la Heat), create avenues for drama and intensity beyond the sometimes soul-shaking violence in the Zodiac's world. Zodiac shan't be relegated to a best-guess-ending-for-an-unsolved-crime category, it works in too many ways and really doesn't pretend to solve the case anyway. Like Oliver Stone's JFK before it, Fincher works with facts, alongside supposition (fast and loose in some areas), to make a credible case and a brilliant movie. Interestingly enough, this mirrors the media/law enforcement kerfuffles of today. Unlike JFK, there really aren't alternatives laid out; reasonable doubt isn't an aim, it's a hindrance, the aim here is to draw parallels and expose. "There's more than one way to lose your life to a killer.", the film's tagline reads; there's more than one way to lose a killer as well.

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.