SYNOPSIS: Us and Them tells the love story of Lin Jianqing (actor Jing Boran) and Fang Xiaoxiao (actress Zhou Dongyu). The pair first meet on a train heading to their hometown for Chinese New Year. Ten years later, they are reunited on a plane flight home.
MOVIE REVIEW:
The directing debut of Taiwanese pop singer Rene Liu, Us and Them is a familiar tragi-romance yet it’s also a superbly well-crafted piece of drama well-worth a stream.
Spanning from 2007 to 2018, Jian Qing (Jing Boran from Monster Hunt) and Xiao Xiao (Zhou Dongyu from Soul Mate) are two strangers who became fast friends on the train that is taking them home in the county for the Lunar New Year from bustling Beijing. Jian Qing is an undergraduate who hoped to make a career out of videogames while Xiao Xiao is just pining for an ideal partner to settle down.
While Jian Qing took a liking to the bubbly Xiao Xiao, they remained in the friend zone until Jian Qing’s brief stint in jail finally brought the two together. As Xiao Xiao says in the movie, “There’s never a story that begins happily and ends happily” and our pair of lovebirds ended up going their separate ways after a clash of dreams and realities.
Us and Them indeed is a slow-boiler and definitely takes some time for the audiences to warm up to the romance of Jian Qing and Xiao Xiao. Beneath the many breaking up and meeting up episodes, the story also delves deeper into social messages such as why there are numerous hopeful young Chinese who came into the big cities to chase their dreams or what we locals termed as the 5Cs and the subsequent loneliness faced by their neglected elderly parents in the villagers.
Does possessing a big house and a dream career determine the happiness in your life? Perhaps not. In the case of Jian Qing and Xiao Xiao, the pain of losing each other in the end is far more significant than the former material achievements even though both of them knew that it’s no longer possible to get back to the past. If the painful outcome of their relationship is not enough to tear you up, Liu and her team of credited writers threw in a very poignant ending that involved a letter written by Jian Qing’s late father (played by director Tian Zhuangzhuang) to Xiao Xiao.
Jing Boran and Zhou Dongyu are amazing in their respective roles simply because the entire movie practically lies on their shoulders. It’s akin to Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung in Comrades: Almost a Love Story. Acclaimed cinematographer Mark Lee shot the drama in both black-and-white and colour though both segments look equally breath-taking and beautiful on the small screen.
Us and Them shines largely on the performances and the underlying messages. In a way, granting the movie necessary gravitas despite a predictable outcome. For such a brilliant debut, Liu is indeed a commendable director well-worth the transition.
MOVIE RATING:
Review by Linus Tee
Genre: Comedy
Director: Oliver Parker
Cast: Charlotte Riley, Rupert Graves, Rob Brydon, Jim Carter, Adeel Akhtar, Thomas Turgoose, Jane Horrocks, Daniel Mays
RunTime: 1 hr 37 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:
Opening Day: 12 July 2018
Synopsis: Faced with a full-blown mid-life crisis, accountant Eric (Rob Brydon) joins an all-male group of synchronised swimmers, discovering that making patterns in a pool can, for a couple of hours at least, smooth out the bumps in his work and marriage. Initially keeping their personal lives in the locker, the ramshackle squad and coach Susan slowly learn to reveal their inner lives, as well as their paunches. But can they get their lives and routines in sync as they embark on an unlikely journey to Milan to compete in the World Championship?
Movie Review:
Two decades after a couple of middle-aged down-and-out British men found fulfilment by being themselves and baring their skin, along comes another bunch of similarly-disillusioned similarly-aged blokes hoping to do just the same. Though based on a true story of a group of Swedish men who competed in the synchronised swimming world championship, ‘Swimming with Men’ is ultimately reminiscent of ‘The Full Monty’, but that comparison only serves to emphasise the flaws within Oliver Parker’s wannabe feel-good comedy.
As penned by Aschlin Ditta, it lacks the character depth needed for us to empathise with these members of the swimming club. Faring the best among them is Rob Brydon’s central Reggie Perrin-like figure Eric, a tax accountant going through an existential crisis about the monotony of his life, so much so that he’s convinced that his newly elected local councillor wife Heather (Jane Horrocks) is having an affair with her smarmy boss. Eric finds calm in his regular swims at the local pool, and one evening geekily advises the seven chaps of an amateur synchronised swimming team he’s been seeing around of the mathematical imbalance of the geometrical manoeuvre they have been practising. Of course, Eric will eventually join them and find both purpose and meaning in his life, prompting him to try to reconcile with Heather, but his irresponsibility towards his wife and teenage son by having walked out of them in the first place makes it difficult for us to have any sympathy for him.
The rest of Eric’s fellow swimmers get any shorter shrift, including Jim Carter’s lonely widow, Adeel Ahktar’s secretive Kurt, Thomas Turgoose’s young delinquent Tom, Rupert Graves’ divorced silver fox Luke and Daniel Mays’ builder-cum-frustrated-footballer Colin. Each one is almost superficially assigned a certain middle-aged burden, whether divorce or criminality or a difficult partner, for which swimming becomes both a refuge and a source of hope in their lives. But we hardly, if at all, get to see any of them outside of the swim club, which seems artificially kept apart so that one need not complicate the other. That may be conveniently structured to keep the narrative lean, but it also reduces the other seven individuals to largely one-dimensional creations. We should also say the same of Charlotte Riley’s considerably younger swim coach Susan, who again so happens to be in a relationship with a Swedish synchro swimmer and has all the time in a week to train them.
That the finale still proves mildly rousing is credit to the well-chosen cast, who wring as much as possible from the thin material and share some winning chemistry with one another. You’ll recognise their faces if you’re a fan of British fare, and they lend the film some much-needed poignancy exploring the strengths and weaknesses of male friendship. They also deserve credit for mostly performing the moves by themselves, including back flips, frog dives and synchronised dives, which certainly require a considerable amount of training and practice in order to get right for the shots that we do see. Kudos too to the real-life Swedish team who inspired the film, for turning up as themselves when the film goes to the world championships in Milan where the fictional English team win their redemption.
Notwithstanding, ‘Swimming with Men’ comes up lacking in character and thematic resonance vis-à-vis ‘The Full Monty’, and it is for both these reasons that we said is why this film pales in comparison. Despite a strong cast and a promising set-up, Parker fails to make good on either by forgetting how important characterisation is to the comedy and being content with bare-bones plotting. There’s no denying that most of the gentle humour does hit the mark, and if you’re looking for an undemanding watch on a lazy afternoon that you’ll probably find yourself reasonably entertained, but anyone else hoping for more will quite certainly be disappointed that its plunge into middle-aged male neurosis is this shallow.
Movie Rating:
(It is no 'Full Monty', despite its ambition, but this amiable comedy of similarly-disillusioned similarly-aged blokes finding meaning and purpose in synchronised swimming is lifted by strong performances and good chemistry)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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TRAILER WATCH - THE PREDATOR TRAILER #2Posted on 29 Jun 2018 |
Genre: Thriller
Director: Gerard McMurray
Cast: Y’Lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Steve Harris, Marisa Tomei
RunTime: 1 hr 38 mins
Rating: M18 (Violence and Sexual Scene)
Released By: UIP
Official Website:
Opening Day: 22 August 2018
Synopsis: Behind every tradition lies a revolution. Next Independence Day, witness the rise of our country’s 12 hours of annual lawlessness. Welcome to the movement that began as a simple experiment: The First Purge. To push the crime rate below one percent for the rest of the year, the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) test a sociological theory that vents aggression for one night in one isolated community. But when the violence of oppressors meets the rage of the marginalized, the contagion will explode from the trial-city borders and spread across the nation.
Movie Review:
One night per year, where all manner of crime is legal, in order to allow citizens a cathartic means to let go of their inner rage. That was the simple but intriguing premise which James DeMonaco explored in a trilogy of violent B-movie thrillers that found socio-political relevance in its depiction of class and racial discrimination. As its title suggests, this fourth chapter in the franchise written again by DeMonaco but directed by newcomer Gerard McMurray goes back to the beginning, in order to explore just how the annual Purge came to be a hallowed American tradition.
At least that was the intention; in truth, much of what would have been interesting to see is dispensed with in a quick opening montage, namely the rise of the hard-right political party known as the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) arising from the socio-economic chaos of a plunging stock market, another housing crisis, spiralling unemployment and civil unrest. “The American dream is dead," the new President says to the people. "We will do whatever it takes to let you dream again.” And thanks to leading behavioural scientist Dr Updale (Marisa Tomei), the titular social experiment is born, with the President endorsing his chief of staff (Patch Darragh) to carry out the social experiment on Staten Island - presumably because poor people of colour are more likely to riot than affluent white ones and would therefore be in need of such a freeing experience.
Like the last three movies, ‘The First Purge’ unfolds largely within the 12 hours of a single Purge, or in this case the so-called Experiment. The very notion of the Experiment divides the impoverished black and Latino neighbourhood: there are those who vehemently oppose it, including drug lord Dmitri (Y’lan Noel) and his ex-girlfriend turned activist Nya (Lex Scott Davis); and there are those who seek to exploit the occasion for their own self-seeking ends, including Nya’s impulsive younger brother Isaiah (Joivan Wade) and the stone-cold psycho Skeletor (Rotimi Paul). At first, the fight is pretty much within these characters, who either have a score to settle with someone else or are forced to save someone they love/ care about, but soon enough these residents realise that they are being systematically targeted by groups of heavily-armed cops, Klansmen and right-wing militia.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure that these mercenaries have been sent in by the NFFA in order to up the body count – and let’s just say the explicit imagery of white supremacists, a rubber blackface mask worn by a white soldier or a mercenary leader wearing a Gestapo-slash-bondage outfit is no coincidence. Heck, the filmmakers even make it so blatantly obvious by re-purposing a line from President Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ tape. There is no subtlety or nuance to the subtext, although we suspect many may tend to agree that there is no need for such restraint in today’s political day and age.
Nevertheless, what holds the film back from being sharp allegory is not how bluntly but how shallowly it develops its own dystopian concept, that doesn’t go much further than unleashing the same violence and bloodshed upon its White terrorisers. Most of the film therefore becomes a numbing cycle of pursuit and evasion, attack and counter-attack, frenzied stabbings followed by rounds of automatic gunfire. Even as throwback to the sort of unabashedly violent B-movies John Carpenter was synonymous with in the 70s and 80s, ‘The First Purge’ lacks the rhythm, momentum and much less excitement to sustain itself or its audience’s interest for its hour-and-a-half duration.
Whereas the earlier two ‘Purge’ sequels could rely on the raw magnetism of its lead star Frank Grillo, the cast of mostly unknowns largely fail to register. The only exception is Noel, who briefly comes alive in the drawn-out finale where he shifts into Rambo mode and delivers a cracker-jack three-way beatdown on a winding staircase. It doesn’t help that their characters are pretty much defined by their staccato diatribes which DeMonaco seems to have penned while under some stupor, undermining what credulity or authenticity one might have been willing to extend to them.
Frankly, there isn’t much more that this chapter says which hasn’t already been covered in the preceding trilogy, leaving one to wonder if DeMonaco is just milking his idea to death, especially since there is already a drama series planned. This one seems even more gory than its predecessors, as if straining to leave an impression. Alas, ‘The First Purge’ doesn’t at all develop its starting premise in any new or interesting direction, coming off as pure shlock masquerading as topically relevant commentary. Perhaps this should just as well be the final purge, because we sure as hell ain’t looking forward to the next one at all.
Movie Rating:
(Three movies in, this dystopian socio-political horror seems to have purged its well of ideas and inspiration, and this prequel is no better than B-movie shlock)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sunny Suljic, Kyle MacLachlan
RunTime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: PG (Some Disturbing Scenes)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: https://www.housewithaclock.com/
Opening Day: 1 November 2018
Synopsis: In the tradition of Amblin classics where fantastical events occur in the most unexpected places, Jack Black and two-time Academy Award® winner Cate Blanchett star in The House with a Clock in Its Walls, from Amblin Entertainment. The magical adventure tells the spine-tingling tale of 10-year-old Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house with a mysterious tick-tocking heart. But his new town’s sleepy façade jolts to life with a secret world of warlocks and witches when Lewis accidentally awakens the dead.
Movie Review:
‘The House with a Clock in Its Walls’ isn’t a ‘Goosebumps’ sequel, although it’s understandable why anyone would mistake it as such. Like ‘Goosebumps’ author R.L. Stine’s novels, the 1973 book by John Bellairs was young-adult horror fantasy which contained just the right amount of evil to prompt childish shivers, but not quite enough to cause nightmares. Indeed, even though gore specialist Eli Roth is behind the camera, its scares consist largely of supernatural spookery – ominous spell books, shuddering tombstones, vomiting pumpkins, and its most extreme, a walking corpse brought back from the dead who resembles Ebenezer Scrooge’s Jacob Marley – that is laced with humour, goof and whimsical charm.
The setting is 1955 in a fictional small town called New Zebedee, and those who have lived through the times can certainly relate to its throwback elements of gumballs and Ovaltine milkshakes. Our protagonist is the bookish, newly bereaved, 10-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who arrives in the town to live with his eccentric uncle Jonathan (Jack Black). Not surprisingly, Lewis faces some adjustment issues at the start: not only is he not fitting in well at school, he finds the house with an unusually high number of clocks extremely creepy. It doesn’t help that Uncle Jonathan is also behaving strangely, stalking the halls of the house at night tapping on walls and tinkering with the clocks.
At the prompting of his similarly mysterious next-door neighbour Florence (Cate Blanchett), Uncle Jonathan lets Lewis into a couple of secrets – most notably, that there is a whole hidden world of warlocks and witches right under his nose. Jonathan is himself a warlock, and Florence a witch, but the greater evil is the house’s previous resident Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan), who had died years ago after having believed to have sacrificed his wife Selena (Renee Elise Goldsberry) to build the titular timepiece that could somehow wreak havoc on the forces of time. Like clockwork (pardon the pun), Lewis unknowingly unleashes that precise evil after trying to impress a potential friend with magic from a spell-book he finds behind a giant cupboard that Jonathan left explicit instructions not to open.
With Isaac brought back to life, Roth takes the opportunity to unfurl the loud wallpaper and CGI bric-a-brac, although these are not without its charms. From menacing jack o’lanterns, to a room full of sinister automatons, to Jack Black’s urinating man-baby, there are enough sufficiently inventive visual treats to keep you entertained. Oh yes, compliments to John Hutman’s imaginative production design, you’ll be marvelling at idiosyncratic creations like flatulent plant sculptures, stained-glass windows whose colourful images morph every hour, and even a topiary griffin that farts leaves. The house itself is something to behold, almost a living and breathing organism whose art and furniture come to wondrous life.
Somewhat lacking though is a deeper sense of poignancy that seems curiously out of reach of Eric Kripke’s script. Lewis’ grief is touched on in an early scene at the family wake, but is otherwise relegated to a plot device; ditto his yearning to belong, which while the key impetus for his blunder in resurrecting Isaac, isn’t portrayed with sufficient depth to truly resonate on a deeper level. What it lacks in emotion, it makes up for in laughs. Black carries the goofball fun with his signature brand of kooky glee, but here he finds a delightful companion in Blanchett’s screwball wit. As unlikely as their pairing may have seemed, Black and Blanchett turn out to be a match made in comedy heaven, and their scenes together lend the movie an effervescence that no special effect could hope to conjure.
It’s befitting that this family-friendly horror hails from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, seeing as how the movie bears more than a hint of the Spielbergian touch and his child’s eye-view. Roth makes a confident transition from R-rated gory exploitation to PG-rated supernatural fun, with some enjoyably weird and wonderful CGI set-pieces to boot. We won’t blame you for feeling that it all seems a little too familiar to similar genre fare like ‘Goosebumps’ or ‘Miss Peregrine’s House for Peculiar Children’, but as long as you’re in the mood for some Halloween-themed family fare, this should still be a live-action treat with more than a couple of tricks up its sleeve.
Movie Rating:
(Jack Black and Cate Blanchett are a wonderful screwball pair, complementing the visually inventive CGI bric-a-brac that makes for an entertaining family-friendly Halloween-themed outing)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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TRAILER WATCH - BOHEMIAN RHAPSODYPosted on 18 Jul 2018 |
Genre: Crime/Mystery/Thriller
Director: Mathew Cullen
Cast: Amber Heard, Billy Bob Thornton, Jim Sturgess, Cara Delevingne, Theo James, Gemma Chan, Jaimie Alexander, Jason Isaacs, Lily Cole, Johnny Depp
RunTime: 1 hr 48 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes and Nudity)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:
Opening Day: 29 November 2018
Synopsis: A murder story for the end of the millennium, LONDON FIELDS centers upon Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. A psychic who has succumbed to a series of false premonitions, Nicola must now contend with one that could be her final vision. Feeling compelled to patronize a London dive bar, she encounters two different men - Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts, and the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch - one of whom might be her killer. As Nicola leads her suitors toward the precipice, London - and, indeed, the entire world - seems to shamble after them.
Movie Review:
Amber Heard carved a name for herself starring in horror thrillers liked All The Boys Love Mandy Lane and The Ward before her short-lived, troubled marriage to superstar Johnny Depp overshadowed her movie career.
Before she returns (in probably her biggest role to date) to the big screen in the DC superhero flick, Aquaman, brace yourself for the most pretentious movie of the year, London Fields which ironically starred Heard and her uncredited ex-beau.
Based on an acclaimed novel by British writer Martin Amis, London Fields encompassed themes of sex, seduction, murder and apocalypse but comes out short in every area that legal tussles between the director and producers didn’t allow it to be release until 2018, almost five years after the movie was shot.
Billy Bob Thornton stars as a dying, writer’s block suffering American writer, Samson Young who came to London in search of inspirations for his last book. In his fancy loan apartment, he came across a mysterious sexy woman, Nicola Six (Amber Heard) who supposedly possessed the power to predict future events liked the date and location of her death for example. Intriguing right? However, either the cinematic version of Amis’ original material didn’t turn out as shot or music director turned film director Mathew Cullen has read the wrong book, the rest of the movie has Nicola swirling herself around with another two men, Keith Talent (played by an unrecognizable Jim Sturgess), a scumbag with a talent for darts and Guy Clinch (Theo James from Divergent), a rich unhappy married man.
So instead of exploring ways to escape her tragic death, Nicola switches from being a vamp to a virgin and tempting death by playing slutty and trashy to Keith and Guy simultaneously making sure that Young is taking notes and making her life story as his latest novel. So who in the end is the killer of Nicola? Is it Keith the crook or the overzealous Clinch? Or is it even the terminally ill Young who boringly narrates the entire movie? I guess most will be tempted to walk out of the hall after an hour into it if not for Heard’s constant lingerie changing and unnecessary nudity bits as the muddled flick lingers on aimlessly.
London Fields is certainly one hell of a lousy movie. It has lackluster visuals, cheap sets, atrocious pacing and weird motives. At some point, we are introduced to a loanshark with nice long sideburns and a laugh-out-name, Chick Purchase. Chick for info is nicely portrayed by an uncredited Johnny Depp and he of all people happens to play the most interesting character. Despite being a bad movie, you might be able to spot a couple of familiar faces liked Cara Delevinge (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians) and Jaimie Alexander (Thor). Most likely lured by the fact it’s based on the prestigious Martin Amis’ novel.
Seriously, no one bothers in the end whether a director’s cut exists elsewhere given the atrocious storytelling and less than interesting characters. Perhaps all the off-screen fuss and tussles by the filmmakers might make a worthier tale to tell instead of this neo-noir uneventful affair.
Movie Rating:
(The sexually attractive Amber Heard acting as a temptress can’t save this mess of a movie if you can still call it a movie)
Review by Linus Tee
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TRAILER WATCH - 23:59 THE HAUNTING HOURPosted on 07 Jul 2018 |
SYNOPSIS: Held captive in a futuristic smart house, a woman hopes to escape by befriending the A.I. program that controls the house.
MOVIE REVIEW:
‘Tau’ won’t be the first science-fiction movie to pose the question of whether it is possible for artificial intelligence to possess humanity, which is also precisely why it proves to be underwhelming. The high-concept premise of director Federico D’Alessandro’s film revolves around a woman who is kidnapped and trapped in the high-tech home of a twisted inventor that is run by the titular AI programme. As you can imagine, the woman starts to interact with the AI, which leads the latter to start asking existential questions and attempt to overcome the limitations of its source code. It’s also not that hard to guess that the AI will come to defy its creator, thereby leading to a climax where it has to decide if it is simply a computer or if it can be more.
As written by Noga Landau, ‘Tau’ is essentially a three-hander among the woman Julia (Maika Monroe), the inventor Alex (Ed Skrein) and the AI (voiced by recently-minted Academy Award winner Gary Oldman). Even so, the movie suffers from a lack of character depth, and there is not much plot to make up for it as well. At the start, we see how Julia stalks nightclubs and steals the valuables of those whom she gets close to; and then, when she first wakes up strapped on a laboratory chair, we get a twenty-second montage summarising her childhood isolation and abusive parents – but that is the extent of how much we come to learn about Julia, and why she might just be the subject that Alex’s experiment so desperately needs for a breakthrough. Alex, on the other hand, is depicted as plain cold-hearted, with nary a qualm for sacrificing the lives of his captives in order to further his own research.
But arguably, the most interesting one among the trio should no doubt be Tau itself, since it is the very subject of the movie. To be fair, it is the most intriguing among the trio, but not quite enough to convince us that it is some cutting-edge prototype which Alex has developed. Indeed, Tau’s abilities seem no more than efficient smart home technology at the beginning, what with its ability to keep the house clean, regulated and ready for Alex. Its interactions with Julia are probably the most fascinating parts of the movie, what with Julia teaching it about the confines of the house, the history of mankind and the classical music composers whose works it is enamoured with, and the very concept of personhood. Thanks to some beautiful visuals, these scenes have a transcendental quality, and recall one’s own journey learning or teaching our kids about the world and what it holds.
Still, Tau’s transformation could be much more compelling. Like we said, you’ve probably seen similar such movies before, and ‘Tau’ doesn’t break any new ground. There is but a couple of scenes where we get to see the tension Tau faces between following orders and following its newfound instincts, and even so, they aren’t quite emotionally or intellectually gripping. It doesn’t help that Tau is too quickly reduced to a shadow of its former self each time one of these encounters takes place, given how Alex punishes Tau by deleting his most recent memories, thereby leaving less and less learned intelligence and more and more programmed source code. To put it simply, the sense of perspective and empathy which Tau gains over the course of the movie needs to go further and deeper, in order for us to truly appreciate the dilemma which it supposedly faces.
That said, ‘Tau’ isn’t a bad film, especially not if you’re looking for something undemanding on the streaming platform. Clearly made as an independent film, it tries to make the best out of its limited budget, and for the most part, is fairly successful at keeping you engaged throughout its duration. Its premise might sound new, but don’t go in expecting its execution to be anything else but. This is a B-movie through and through, and it isn’t smart enough to distinguish itself from similarly-themed ones which have come before it and will most certainly come after it. On a final note, we’re not quite sure why Oldman signed up for this, but the veteran character actor’s involvement alone lends ‘Tau’ some prestige, much as the movie can’t justify his presence, so you’d do well to bear that in mind if it’s Oldman that’s gotten you keen on this one.
MOVIE RATING:
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Gilbert Chan
Cast: Mark Lee, Wang Lei, Noah Yap, Richie Koh, Natalia Ng, Melody Low, Fabian Loo
RunTime: 1 hr 26 mins
Rating: PG13
Released By: Golden Village Pictures, mm2 Entertainment and Clover Films
Official Website:
Opening Day: 9 August 2018
Synopsis: Recruit Tommy - a socially awkward individual, is the subject of teasing and bullying by his army mates. He seeks comfort from the compliments left by his readers on his blog that features fictitious army horror stories he writes in his free time. One day, he received a text message from an attractive reader and things started to go awry…
Movie Review:
Even though writer-director Gilbert Chan could very well have fashioned a sequel from the open ending of his previous feature ’23:59’, this second chapter of the horror series bears no relation to its predecessor; in fact, there is nothing which ties it to its title too, seeing as how there is no reference whatsoever to the supposed witching hour. On the contrary, ’23:59: The Haunting Hour’ comprises of a triptych of ghost stories loosely connected to one another via a blogger named Tommy (Fabian Loo), whose online publications of army ghost stories on ‘Haunting Hour’ have earned him a certain following. Tommy serves as narrator of the first two stories set in 1969 and 1983 respectively, and is himself the protagonist of the third story in present day, which arguably has little to do with the army at all.
‘Ah Boys to Men’ supporting actor Noah Yap anchors the first short, starring as a recruit Ah Seng who along with his two buddies are punished by their sergeant for bad-mouthing him while trench-digging in the forest. Choosing to go AWOL than be ‘tekan-ed’ by their sergeant, the trio chance upon an old wooden house where they find a frightened Malay lady. Said lady claims that a hideous creature dressed in Japanese army fatigues has been terrorising their village over the past few nights, and no sooner have they learnt of the legend are they confronted with the heaving creature with red eyes. Just like the recruits who find themselves lost in the jungle, the story goes nowhere, and after a brief sequence hiding from the beast, the story comes to an abrupt end with one of them sitting underneath a tree with his stomach cut open and his entrails exposed.
The subsequent tale follows a group of commando trainees and their ‘Encik’ sergeant who unknowingly bring a powerful snake spirit back to Singapore from the jungles of Brunei. Mark Lee plays the aforementioned Encik Teo, and is single-handedly responsible for the film’s most entertaining sequence in which he shows the trainees how to skin a snake as if unsheathing a condom. Sadly, he dies too soon, and the rest of the story opts for a running gag where the spirit possesses the camp’s plump, fussy and altogether unlikeable chief clerk Mdm Chew and deludes its male prey into thinking that she is a sexy vixen (Malaysian actress Natalia Ng) before killing them.
To subdue the spirit, the camp’s commander enlists the help of a Taoist medium (Wang Lei), who suggests that they use the handsome recruit Desmond (Ritchie Koh) as bait to lure her before exploding a grenade filled with sulphur in her mouth. It is downright sexist all right, and unless you’re in the mood for such base pleasures, you’ll probably find it offensive, even repulsive. There is also no closure to the tale, which ends with Tommy simply saying how the grenade had not killed the spirit but only made it stronger and angrier. It should also be said that both this and the preceding story pay little attention to detail about army routines/ protocol, which not only drains their credibility but also makes them even more contrived.
Ironically, the story which is most grounded has very little bearing on army life at all. Turns out that Tommy is a recruit struggling to get used to his own BMT experience, and is hated by his platoon mates for getting them into trouble; in his loneliness, he invents a fake ‘friendssbook’ profile of a female admirer of his stories who goes by the moniker ‘Photogirl94’ and pretends to have conversations with her. Not surprisingly, the said fictional girlfriend he names Mia acquires a life of her own, and starts texting him back. It is at this time too that strange things start happening around him, involving puddles of water and locks of female hair in the bunk toilet and in his own room at home.
Notwithstanding how daft he as a writer of horror stories must be not to notice that something is not quite right with Mia, Tommy goes ahead to reach out to her, revealing a tragic story of cyberbullying, peer pressure and teenage suicide. For those who are fans of influencer Melody Low, you may be glad to know that she makes a brief but pivotal appearance in this story. Like we said, its connection with the army is but tangential, although this is easily the very best among the three for not only having a proper story but also themes that manage to be relatable and relevant.
Having said that, there are hardly any scares to be had throughout this brief 86-minute movie, which feels a lot longer than it actually is. Besides the occasional jump-scare, there is little by way of tension, suspense or dread that Chan builds up in individual scenes. Nor for that matter does he even seem bothered to weave a compelling story around them, with the first two army stories barely developed and abruptly tossed away. Admittedly, most of the ghost stories we’ve heard in National Service are no more than campfire fodder, but that hardly excuses the lazy and tedious plotting on shameful display here.
For all its flaws, there was at least greater coherence to ’23:59’, and in almost every other respect, this is a decidedly inferior sequel. That is truly a pity, seeing as how horror stories are pretty much an institution of the NS experience and therefore how ’23:59’ could very well become a sister franchise to the ‘Ah Boys to Men’ films. But this is less a franchise starter than a franchise killer, which depletes what goodwill its mediocre predecessor had built up. There is some patriotic significance in timing the release of ’23:59: The Haunting Hour’ with National Day, but as much as we wanted to like and support this local movie, there is not much here for anyone, Singaporean or otherwise, to be proud of.
Movie Rating:
(Less scarily good than scarily bad, this decidedly inferior sequel to an already mediocre horror obliges you to book out of its sheer tedium)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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