Review: Hong Kong Ghost Stories
Starring: Jennifer Tse Ting-ting, Chrissie Chau Sau-na, Him Law Chung-him
Directors: Wong Jing and Patrick Kong
Category: IIB (Cantonese)
There's plenty of Hong Kong flavour but not many thrills in this two-part compendium of otherworldly tales by two of the city's more renowned purveyors of local fare. Consisting of chapters unrelated except for the underlying theme aptly described in the film's Chinese title (literally translating as 'fierce ghost love stories'), the results are too mild to revive the once popular local horror genre.
First is Wong Jing's 'Classroom', the tale of substitute teacher Jennifer (Jennifer Tse Ting-ting) in a remote middle school whose roster includes a number of spooks. There are a few stabs at psychological nuance but little logic, the thin scenario serving primarily as a showcase for Tse in her first major screen assignment. She acquits herself well in what is largely a reactive role, the pedagogue called upon to act alternately sympathetic to her charges' plight and increasingly terrorised both inside and outside the classroom, including fending off the unwanted attention of an abusive ex-boyfriend (Pakho Chau Pak-ho).
The creepiness is nothing we haven't seen previously and there isn't much in the way of Wong Jing's trademark guilty pleasures. A welcome satiric edge briefly surfaces when Jennifer's parents (Paw Hee-ching and Leung Ka-yan, above right with Tse) arrange a Christian prayer session to bring solace to their troubled daughter. Not that it has any effect, for a spectral student informs Jennifer that her teen tormentors don't believe in Christ, a remark that generated the preview audience's biggest laugh.
Patrick Kong's 'Travel' contains a more successful mixture of humour and horror, though neither rises to a level capable of masking the plot's flimsiness. It starts promisingly enough at a funeral parlour where the catty friends of recently deceased Bobo (Chrissie Chau Sau-na) relate how they first met their late pal. Flashback to a tour bus in Thailand, where a zany guide (Bob Lam Shing-bun) leads the group in an off-colour song that brought forth the preview audience's second major guffaw. Alas, the narrative of murder and mayhem involving Bobo and beau Karl (Him Law Chung-him) proves more ho-hum than horrible.
At 45 minutes each, the yarns lose steam long before the finish line.
Ironically, the most creative bits weren't in the stories themselves but in the connecting segments, the upcoming chapters announced by a cast made up to look like paper funerary objects on a set consisting of papier-m?ch? cameras and lights. It's the type of inventiveness that if applied to the entire feature might have given the production a ghost of a chance at the Halloween box office.
Hong Kong Ghost Stories opens today
