Ghosts have been a recurring theme in many of Singaporean director Kelvin Tong Weng Kian's films.
He burst onto the local film scene in 2005, with The Maid, a horror thriller set against the background of the traditional Hungry Ghost month, then shot the horror comedy Men in White in 2007, about ghosts struggling to survive in Singapore.
Tong's most recent film, starring Shawn Yue Man-lok and Ekin Cheng Yee-kin, was the supernatural thriller Rule #1 about a fictional Hong Kong police unit that investigates supernatural cases. 'I do believe in ghosts, simply because I'm Chinese,' says the 35-year-old director (right). 'I can't see them but I have a very healthy respect for them.'
Moving away from ghosts - but not death - the director is now working on a murder mystery film project. The Monsoon Murders will be set in a Malayan village during the 1930s, a time when electricity first reaches the village. Tong says he is still working on the script, which involves a lot of historical research, and he plans to start shooting next year.
'I didn't set out to do horror. Horror is one of the genres that I like a lot and I think that with The Maid and Rule #1, I've satisfied that itch in me,' the director explains, 'so I'm branching out to try another genre: murder mystery. And if you think of it, murder mystery sort of flows from horror, so it's kind of a natural progression for me as I look for something else to do.'
Tong's first stab at filmmaking (during his national service years) was the short film Moveable Feast, about a man's obsession with food.
His debut effort was praised at the 1996 Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in France - the Cannes of the short film world. But after leaving the army, he briefly worked for a shipping law firm before becoming a film reviewer for Singapore's main English-language daily The Straits Times.
