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59%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #7,566
...out of 20,704 movies
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Jealousy, desire, trust, and revenge. A complicated love triangle emerges during an investigation into the theft of a woman's kidney. At a wedding party in a fancy hotel, a guest happens on the victim. The guest, Chi Ching, reports seeing a suspicious woman at the wedding, and at a police station, it's disclosed that the woman in question, Suen Ling, has slept with Ching's fiancé, Wei. He claims he loves only Ching, but Ling keeps showing up. Reassured by Wei, Ching tries to befriend Ling. Ling's back-story, Ching's health, and Wei's desires keep the love triangle spinning. It's not back-stabbing that Ching must worry about, but a 9-inch incision on her side.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: November 24, 2011
A lot of people are under the impression that every Asian horror movie is perfect, simply because every one that they have seen has been great. That's not necessarily how it works. It's just that only the really good ones get the import / remake treatment, and all of the subpar releases stay in their native country, never to be seen by the outside world. So, whenever I see an American DVD release of an Asian film, I usually just go in assuming that it's going to be pretty damned good; after all, why would a major American company release a shitty Asian movie here? So, I had high hopes when I popped in Koma, but unfortunately, the film lives up to its title.
The film starts off with a wedding's after-party, and we meet up with Ching (Angelica Lee), a drunken bridesmaid who will soon stumble upon a grisly discovery. You see, the hotel that is hosting the party is also hosting another kind of party, one in which an organ thief steals a woman's kidney and leaves her laying in a bathtub full of ice. Ching finds the woman, the police are called in to investigate, and that should be it... but it isn't.
You see, Ching suspects that Ling (Kar Yan Lam) may be the kidney thief due to the fact that she was at the hotel when she really shouldn't have been. An investigation is launched, and it soon comes out that Ling has been screwing Ching's boyfriend Wai (Andy Hui Chi-On), and in return, Wai has been paying the medical bills for Ling's comatose mother. So, Ling may or may not be responsible for the organ thefts, but either way, she is certainly pissed off at Ching for bringing her dirty laundry out into the open, and she begins to threaten and harass Ching.
The two women go back and forth for a while, but then, they are attacked by a mystery man and manage to form a bond that turns them into best friends with Wai stuck in the middle. Of course, there's still that thing about the organ thieves lurking in the background, and that eventually comes back into the forefront of the film... eventually.
The problem with the film is simple: it has a great premise and it has a good (if not predictable) ending, but the middle didn't seem to be very well thought-out. It's almost like a soap opera with trace horror elements at times, and that formula simply didn't work for me. It all kicks off with a perfect scene that is full of beautiful cinematography and a nasty discovery, and this is followed by the obligatory police interrogation and character introductions. That's fine and expected. However, from there, it's as if the filmmakers simply didn't know what to do with the film to get it from that point to the ending.
Speaking of the ending, I'm going to give it some credit: it was well-crafted, it made sense, and even though I knew what was going to happen as soon as I heard a certain line (you'll know what I mean), it worked out rather well. Still, with that said, I have to admit that I'm getting tired of these Asian endings where everything has to be some complex twist that begins with childhood memories and requires five minutes of flashbacks to explain. Yeah, it's one of those movies, and even though Koma is far from the first or the last to use that technique, it just seemed sort of forced here, as if the filmmakers simply put it in to keep up with every other movie doing it. Not every film needs that sort of ending.
On the positive side of things, the two leading ladies mesh well together, and their chemistry saves more than a couple of mundane scenes. I can not say a single negative thing about their acting abilities, and this same exact film with lesser actresses in the leading roles would have easily lost three or four points off the total score. They are that damned good, but even though great acting can elevate a movie, it can not save it when there's not much else going on for it. Such is the case with Koma.
Overall, I'm going with an average rating for this one. It has some great horror elements, but the overall film is more of a soap opera than anything else. I could have accepted that had the script been a little tighter, but as is, it seems as though the filmmakers simply cobbled together a bunch of drama and romance crap to pad out their movie. It has its moments, don't get me wrong: again, the introductory scene was great and there's a really good scene involving a tooth that I particularly enjoyed, logic be damned. Still, there was simply too much padding and not enough meat to really warrant a recommendation. 5/10.
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