Film review: Twilight Online is an imaginative ghost story
"Horror DJ" Edmond Poon Siu-chung's radio show, dedicated to the discussion of supernatural phenomena in the city, has inspired some films, notably Soi Cheang Pou-soi's Horror Hotline ... Big Headed Monster (2002).
Starring: Eddie Cheung Siu-fai, Babyjohn Choi Hon-yik, Lawrence Chou Tsun-wai, Sandra Li Zisun, Edmond Poon Siu-chung
Director: Maggie To Yuk-ching
Category: IIB (Cantonese)
"Horror DJ" Edmond Poon Siu-chung's radio show, dedicated to the discussion of supernatural phenomena in the city, has inspired some films, notably Soi Cheang Pou-soi's Horror Hotline ... Big Headed Monster (2002).
Now his online show has given its name to Twilight Online, a ghost-themed suspense drama with a subplot that involves Poon heading a paranormal investigation into a village school, abandoned soon after a deadly accident that saw a double-decker bus plunge off Ting Kau Bridge into the village 35 metres below.
Weaving together fact, fiction and urban legend, production manager turned writer-director Maggie To Yuk-ching's film has it that one of the accident's 21 victims was a schoolteacher named Ginny Lui (Sandra Li Zishun). What's more, her ghost has taken up residence in a school near to where she was killed.
After learning this via Poon's online show, four students (Canto-pop group Super Girls' Yanny, Jessica and Aka, and Kabby Hui Nga-ting) convince Pong (Lawrence Chou Tsun-wai), a handsome teacher who was Ginny's fiancé, to go on a nighttime expedition to the school, led by Poon.
The idea is to see if they can make contact with Ginny's ghost. Needless to say, they end up experiencing more than they bargained for; in some cases, with fatal consequences.
A parallel story has Inspector Gu (Eddie Cheung Siu-fai), a veteran cop who is Ginny's cousin, assigned to look into sightings of a woman in a red dress jumping to her death at Tuen Mun's Yau Oi Estate (where a number of suicides have taken place in recent years).