Review | Walk with Me film review: Malaysian director Ryon Lee’s horror pastiche is far less than the sum of its parts
- Starring Michelle Wai and Alex Lam, Walk with Me is an atmospheric horror film that just can’t seem to decide what it wants to be
- It evokes everything from J-horror films to The Exorcist, but would have been scarier if only director Lee had stuck to a single vision
1.5/5 stars
Part mistaken-identity psychodrama, part rape-revenge fantasy, and part haunted-doll thriller with one of those ghostly little kids always hanging around in the back, this atmospheric horror film by Malaysian filmmaker Ryon Lee ( Show Me Your Love ) is so confused about its own mythology that even its plot twists appear to contradict each other towards the end.
Directed by Lee from a screenplay he co-wrote with Chang Ying-ying, Walk with Me tells the story of bespectacled garment factory worker Sam (Michelle Wai Sze-nga), who has recently moved into a haunted apartment with her mother (Anna Ng Yuen-yee), who is still obsessed with her stillborn son, and an alcoholic and abusive father (Richard Ng Yiu-hon).
Sam is followed around by the ghost of a little girl, which she somehow believes to be her long-dead sibling. She is also relentlessly bullied at work by a colleague, Fa (Emily Kwan Bo-wai). As if that wasn’t enough, she then experiences even more trauma when one day she regains consciousness in the office of her boss (Singapore-based Chinese actor Qi Yuwu), believing she has been raped.
From there, gory vengeance becomes the order of the day as some of those who have wronged Sam meet their end under supernatural circumstances. There is, however, a lack of fun in such comeuppances; Walk with Me is so grimly and monotonously presented that most of its artificially obnoxious characters – including her boss’s young daughter – are likely to induce only apathy.
The jumbled manner in which Lee adopts various archetypical horror tropes is intriguing at first, but quickly grows tiring. The ghost haunting Sam is first seen to be possessing a neighbour next door, and then supposedly lives in her doll, before appearing in forms that evoke both J-horror films and The Exorcist. The film would have been scarier if only Lee had stuck to a single vision.
The awkward mid-film introduction of Sam’s childhood friend, York (Alex Lam Tak-shun), as a protector out of nowhere only proves another contrived attempt to weave in story suspense where there’s none. Ultimately, it’s just one of a handful of loose strands in Walk with Me, a technically passable but narratively suspect film that is significantly less than the sum of its parts.
