Black Night Review

A highly anticipated entry into the growing list of pan-Asian horror anthology films this Hong Kong / Japan / Thailand co-production squanders most of the good will sent its way thanks to some horribly under baked scripts, clichéd imagery, unsympathetic characters, slipshod production values and scares that simply don’t scare. Of the three films that make up the Black Night anthology only one crosses the threshold to competence.

Black Night begins with Next Door, the entry from Hong Kong director Peter Leung. The story of a haunted love triangle the largest problem with Leung’s effort is immediately obvious: his characters are just horrible people and not only do we want to see them die but we want to see them die in far more gruesome ways than the tired clichés that Leung is prepared to offer up. Next Door begins with Jane, a self centered rocker girl who has just returned unannounced three months after leaving her policeman boyfriend Joe for Taiwan. Why’d she leave? Apparently just because she felt like it. Why’d she come back? Ditto. That’s as deep as Jane gets. As for Joe, he’s taken up with his attractive neighbor since Jane left but he mysteriously tosses her aside the instant Jane reappears on his doorstep with nary a question asked. Underwritten relationship? Damn straight. The ghostly elements begin almost immediately and are every bit as weakly presented as Joe and Jane’s relationship: Joe has a nightmare, Jane sees a small boy with a marble, spooky puddles appear, neighbor girl bangs her head on her apartment door. Not only is Next Door not frightening but it is poorly shot, anemically scripted and is built entirely around elements lifted directly from other far superior films. It is instantly forgettable and so that is what I have done with it.

Up next is Dark Hole from Japanese director Takihiko Akiyama, a film that opens with some pretence to artiness but quickly undermines that pretense with a shooting style that would be low rent even by Made In Canada Movie Of The Week standards – which are low indeed, for those who have never had their screens graced by such things – and an even weaker script than Next Door’s. This one again features women frightened of puddles and mysterious dreams. Yuki, a young aquarium employee, is plagued by strange recurring nightmares for which her boyfriend urges she see a psychiatrist. She is reluctant at first but agrees when she begins to have waking visions of a young boy in a yellow sweater and her dead mother, not to mention the aforementioned puddles appearing on her apartment floor. Could there be some connection to – and I’m not making this up – the pet fish she had in childhood? When the entire plot is worked out and revealed in a lengthy exposition by a psychiatrist after just a single session it’s safe to say that your film is less than good. If only Hyu – the childhood pet – had caught the ick we could have been spared this one.

If you are to see Black Night, Thanit Jitnukul’s Lost Memory is the only worthwhile reason why. Though it still has some significant plot holes conveniently filled in by lengthy bursts of exposition, Lost Memory stands head and shoulders above the other entries in the anthology, boasting some beautiful direction, haunting imagery and a script that features the only believable characters to appear anywhere in these three films. Interestingly it is also the film that makes the least effort to shock and scare, working more as a supernaturally tinged tale of loss and grief. Lost Memory revolves around Prang, a beautiful young mother who has suffered partial memory loss in a car accident and is trying to piece her life back together while caring for her young son. Though Lost Memory still features some tired imagery, indulging in both the watery ghost and creepy kid approaches, Jitnukul at least tries to do something new and interesting with those images – and succeeds with a fantastically effective water effect that I’ve never seen before – and is alone in this trio of directors in understanding that if your characters don’t work nothing does and thus in spending time making sure that his central characters actually work. Though not a classic story Lost Memory is, at least, a very good one well told with some nice eye candy and a strong lead performance, all of which means it is positively worlds better than the two embarrassments that precede it.

The recent Hong Kong DVD release is bare of extras – it features only a trailer and two minute, unsubtitled Making Of – but it does feature a strong anamorphic transfer and very good English subtitling.