Starring: Annie Liu Hsin-you, Dylan Kuo Pin-chao, Seto Asaka, Kashiwabara Takashi
Directors: Patrick Leung Pak-kin, Takahiko Akiyama, Thanit Jitnukul
Category: IIB (Cantonese, Putonghua, Japanese and Thai)
Efforts by Hong Kong filmmakers to reclaim their all but lost Asian market share has led to an upsurge of so-called pan-Asian productions - collaborative efforts geared towards fostering boundary-crossing box-office appeal. This has had lucrative returns in the horror genre, notably the multilingual three-segment omnibus Three (2002) and its 2004 sequel, Three ... Extremes.
Black Night, another trilogy of supposed terror, follows a similar route, with stories hailing from Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. But whereas Three and Three ... Extremes possessed one superior Hong Kong chapter to offset the middling quality of the other two-thirds, Black Night as a whole is rarely better than average, no matter what its demons' ethnicity.
The Hong Kong portion, Next Door, is technically if not thematically more sophisticated than its counterparts. Director-writer Patrick Leung creates a chilling atmosphere in depicting the eerie triangular relationship between sexy musician Jane (Annie Liu, projecting a different persona from her debut last year in Ah Sou), kinky cop Joe (Dylan Kuo, still a bit too model-like to be convincing), and career-minded Hosie (Race Wong, who brings to the potentially flamboyant part an unexpected gravity).
