Review | Burning movie review: Fatal Attraction rip-off starring Kevin Cheng and Dada Chan is tame and thoroughly unimaginative

Man meets woman at party, blacks out, wakes up in her bed, she confides in him, then professes her love and worms her way into his household. Sound familiar?

This vapid rehash of Adrian Lyne’s 1987 film has minimal thrills, no passionate sex, and mediocre acting. Director Benny Lau must have had some bills to pay

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Rebecca Zhu (left) and Dada Chan in a still from Burning (Category IIA), directed by Benny Lau. Kevin Cheng co-stars

Published: 6:31pm, 30 Jun 2022Updated: 6:34pm, 30 Jun 2022

1.5/5 stars

A happily married man becomes the unwilling object of obsession of a psychopathic woman with whom he has flirted briefly in this half-hearted attempt at a psychological thriller.

Presumably the film was made on the assumption that the few people who are clueless enough to buy a ticket to see it must also be too cine-illiterate to have ever heard of Fatal Attraction.

Burning is not to be confused with Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 psychological thriller of the same name (even though both films happen to feature a shed being set on fire in their climaxes); this is a thoroughly forgettable Hong Kong movie directed by radio host turned filmmaker Benny Lau Wai-hang.

Lau has previously impressed with his heartwarming debut Wong Ka Yan; he followed it up with the sincere romance When Sun Meets Moon, and directed the well-received series The Parents League for ViuTV, which aired earlier this year. One can only assume he agreed to put his name to this utterly unimaginative rehash of Adrian Lyne’s 1987 film because he has some big bills to pay.

Kevin Cheng Ka-wing (G Storm) plays Lam, a caring and beloved family doctor who lives with his wife (Rebecca Zhu) and young son in a nice house in the countryside. His peaceful life takes a dramatic turn one day when he saves his son’s piano teacher from … a locked toilet, and coincidentally bumps into her again at his buddy’s birthday drinks later that day.