Hong Kong has been haunted on the screen for a very long time, but starting with Sammo Hung “Encounters of a Spooky Kind” (1980) the city also found plenty of humor in it. The HK ghost genre has developed its completely unique style: smart, quirky, bonkers and scary at the same time. Supernatural served this way is not exactly what horror genre is supposed to be about – chilling, mocking the improbable elements of scare, the things your logic tells you are ridiculous, but your instincts don't. Ultimately, this works pretty well when it involves a harmonious balance between humor, dread, and melodrama.
Let it Ghost is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam
Wong Hoi might be a first time director, but he cooks his dish according to the traditional recipe. In his omnibus “Let It Ghost” there are three different type of ghosts the audience encounters, none of them quite malicious but too deep in their outearthly drama not to creep the hell out the living on screen. How they do it would involve giving spoilers. Let's just say that one method would agree with most of the male spectators' expectations of their love life.
Whatever can go wrong for the TV hit series “Incarcerated detective” star Lark (Locker Lam), will, ultimately. Heavily intoxicated after a dinner with the TV executive and producers of the show, instead of organizing a cab, he drives to the shooting location in his expensive sports car. When he dozes off at the wheel, he causes an accident upon which he discovers a young woman's (Chung Suet Ying) lifeless body on the road. Lark isn't keen on ruining his life, and he does what he thinks will go unpunished. There are no witnesses on the dark, local road in the middle of the woods, so he goes to work like nothing ever happened.
The pun already starts with the title of the episode (“Haunted Prison”) Lark is supposed to act in that evening. He is in prison with none less than a ghost, played by the real ghost of a woman he left in the woods, and who happens to be a first time actress assigned for exactly that role. This part of the omnibus is particularly well developed, and works well as a critical commentary on commercial TV shows and their unlikely settings and plots, but also on the working conditions of film crews. Anyway, as we know, drinking and driving is never a good idea.
What would a macho taxi driver who is taking his girlfriend for granted read, than something called “Domineering Driver and the Dainty Wife” about traditional Chinese relationship values? If life took a turn for the worst for the Incarcerated Detective, the ghost (Ashina Kwok) in the film's middle chapter “Haunted Industrial Building” is overly kind to our hero (So Chi Ho), granting him his heart desire. Our macho does bizarrely get called “tsundere” by a mysterious girl in charge of rent-a-party rooms that hold a well kept secret, but his warmer side isn't shown, barely a glimpse of it.
Compared to the first chapter, the photography is more vibrant with colors, embracing the pastel palette of the manga-inspired scenic design when the story switches from the mundane into the world of fantasy. Here, the scriptwriter Norris Wong concentrates more on the quality of dialogues, tackling gender stereotypes, unrealistic expectations of a love relationship and the class bias.
The last part titled “Haunted Shopping Mall” is the omnibus' most melodramatic link, centering around a little girl's ghost wandering around an almost completely abandoned mall that is about to close. Although struggling to pick up on comedy elements that the first two parts succesfully built their narratives on, “Haunted Shopping Mall” is the one that blands the most challenging components: martial arts with a brief wuxia moment, possession and the belief in reincarnation to tell the tale of an abandoned, lonely child. Unless you are into a slapstick, childish humour, this is the least funny of three chapters, in which the mall's corridors echo – metaphorically speaking, with recorded laughter.
This is the first feature for the Hong Kong helmer Wong Hoi, a name to be kept under the radar. This entertaining film with well balanced tempo celebrated its world premiere at Far East Film festival in Udine last year, and it is currently screening in IFFR's Harbour program.
