Original Title: 迷离夜
Synopsis: Horror anthology, based on a series of novels by “Dumplings” writer Lillian Lee.
My Quick Review: This is the first part of a 2 movies anthology from Honk Kong.
In The first segment, “Stolen Goods” Simon Yam plays a working class loser who stelas dead people urns and tries to get money from the family who want the ashes back. Simon Yam might be a famous actor, he’s definitively not an Horror movie director and it shows. The ghosts sightings seem out of sync and do not provoke any kind of scares or fears. And while he is a good actor, he does not have the range of Tony Leung (starring in the second story) and is therefore totally miscast here and never at all believable.
The second story, “A word in the Palm“, might be the best of the film and stars Tony Leung as a fortune teller who can see ghosts. At least there are a couple of efficient scares in this one even if the story is way too predictable and totally unoriginal.
Finally, Fruit Chan’s “Jing Zhe” closes this film and, despite some very cheap special effects, has an original story based on some chinese beliefs, mixing black magic and revenge.
Overall Tales From the Dark is a weak anthology with very few scares and shocks and even less gore. Fans of horror anthologies such as “Three…Extremes” and ” 4bia” will be disappointed.
Unfortunately for Hong Kong, and quite similarly to their current action movies, Tales From the Dark won’t help the horror movie genre there to be able to compete with their japanese, korean or thai counterparts.
My Rating: 5/10
Directors:
Fruit Chan…(segment “Jing Zhe”)
Chi-Ngai Lee…(segment “A Word in the Palm”)
Simon Yam…(segment “Stolen Goods”)
Origin: HK
