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Chinese Horror Movies

Tales From The Dark Part 1 (2013) Review

October 14, 2013 by Eric S. Leave a Comment

Tales-from-the-Dark-reviewOriginal 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

Filed Under: Chinese Horror Movies Tagged With: anthology, Creepy, Foreign, Ghost, High School, revenge, Supernatural

Invitation Only (2009) Review

July 29, 2013 by Eric S. Leave a Comment

invitation-only-reviewOriginal Title: Jue ming pai dui

Synopsis: Five people arrive at a party, fully unaware that the special night is just a cover for an evening of torture and murder.

My Quick Review: I remember when  Invitation Only was released in Asia a couple of years back, everybody was talking about the presence of Maria ozawa (one the most famous japanese porn star) in the casting. Many went to see the movie in the hope to see her naked (and rest assured, she is) while other (mostly women) complained that she wasn’t a good actress and not even good looking enough to play a model.

I had forgotten about all of this controversy when I started watching Invitation Only and it just came back to me when I first saw Maria Ozawa on screen.

But enough with the gossip. Is Invitation Only a good horror movie?

Unfortunately, not really. The script takes its inspiration from other torture porn movies such as Hostel (rich bored guys get their ultimate thrills by torturing/killing people) but never rises above its source material. The acting is pretty bad across the board and I was starting to be really bored past half point of the movie.

If you’re into gore though you’re in for a treat, Invitation Only never shies away from the grossy stuff. But apart from a few torture/kill scenes there is nothing noteworthy in Invitation Only (unless you’re a die-hard fan of Maria Ozawa ;-)).

My Rating: 4/10

Director: Kevin Ko

Origin: Taiwan

Filed Under: Chinese Horror Movies Tagged With: Disturbing, Extreme, Foreign, Gory, Torture

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