SYNOPSIS:
A young and beautiful university student, Rain received
a SMS, “Do you know what the 19th gate of Hell is?”
on her mobile phone, thus beginning her nightmare. The same
SMS also goes out to her best friends, unwittingly, involving
them in a deadly mobile phone game.
There is no turning back. The only way to survive is to win
the game…Can Rain win her right to live and unravel
the mystery of the 19th gate of Hell?
MOVIE REVIEW:
We have nothing against badly-designed movie posters, but
who can blame us for thinking that this Lai Miu-suet-directed
movie is one of the worst anyone has seen so far? And who
can blame us for being judgmental by thinking that the horror
flick based on an Internet novel is probably an awful production?
But being the objective reviewers that we are, we sat through
the movie – all 94 minutes of it.
Gillian
Chung (one half of the popular Hong Kong singing duo Twins)
play a university student who gets herself involved in a messy
game which brings her and her friends through the different
levels of Hell. Yes, you’ve read it right: Hell. What
makes things more interesting is the mode of the game –
messages are sent through mobile phones. What would you do
if you received a mysterious message asking you whether you
know what the 19th level of Hell is?
The
plot does seem fascinating at first, but has anyone seen a
horror picture that actually works given this premise?
As
expected, the movie starts off introducing the not-so-clever
victims and how they dimly get lured into the game one by
one. Of course, if you have watched a fair bit of horror movies,
you’d know that they will die one by one. What’s
left to amuse if the way these foolish kids die – and
sadly, this movie does not manage to make us sit up with its
expectedly bland delivery.
And
when any of the characters being spouting philosophical statements
about revenge and karma, they only end up looking laughable.
Another
unfortunate aspect of this movie is its uncreative use of
computer graphics. The sets look like recycled scenes from
The Pang Brothers’ superior Re-cycled (2006). Sure,
the girls may scream their hearts out whenever they are plunged
into one level of Hell, but to the weary viewers, the tacky
backgrounds only manages to look mildly uninteresting.
Let’s
see, with a formulaic plot that had us guessing correctly
who the evil-doer is 20 minutes into the show, and an unattractive
use of technology, what’s there to look forward to in
this movie? Truth be told, our eyes brightened up when the
other Twin Charlene Choi made a cameo towards the end of the
movie.
SPECIAL
FEATURES:
This Code 3 disc contains only a Trailer and a somewhat pointless
Photo Gallery.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The visual transfer is acceptably clear, while
the movie is dubbed in an unnatural Mandarin audio track.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING:
Review by John Li
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