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59%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #6,929
...out of 20,716 movies
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Jiney, an art and photography student, but despite winning an award, she remains unhappy with the work. After photographing the aftermath of a fatal car accident she finds herself obsessed with death. She begins to talk about suicide, and suffers flashbacks of an incident from her youth when she was sexually abused by some young boys.
--TMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: January 20, 2006
Jiney (Race Wong) is a photographer by trade and an artist on the side, and as we find out in the opening scene of the film, a young man by the name of Anson (Anson Leung) is quite interested in her... especially after she won the top prize in a recent photography contest. Jiney brushes him off, and when he asks why, she points out that she has a date with her female friend Jas (Race Wong's real-life sister Rosanne Wong). Yes, our photographer heroine is a lesbian, much to the chagrin of her potential suitor. The two young ladies head out to take some pictures of both the city and the neighboring countryside, and all seems to be well in these two ladies' lives. That all changes, however, when Jiney witnesses a car accident while walking down the street. Instinctively, she pulls out her camera and snaps a few pictures of both the wreck and the mangled human that the car plowed over, and this sets into motion an obsession with these "moments of death" that she begins to love to capture. Constantly taking these types of pictures and her near-obsession with the photographic results starts to take their toll on Jiney, however, and a flood of childhood memories of abuse and neglect flood to the surface, causing her to decide that perhaps taking these pictures isn't the best thing for her to be doing. Just when things are back to normal and the subject of her photography is once again naked ladies and flowers, however, she receives a video-tape in the mail containing some brutal snuff material. It turns out that someone else enjoys this form of artwork as well, and is quite interested in having Jiney join them for an "exhibition" of sorts.
Prior to checking this movie out, I wasn't quite sure what to expect - is it a horror, a thriller, a mixture of both, or something completely different? I decided to give it a shot anyway, seeing as how it was made by Oxide Pang Chun, a guy who has a pretty good track record in the movie business (see: The Eye and The Eye 2). It turns out that this movie is pretty far from what Pang normally does, as instead of being either a horror or a thriller, this one falls more into the drama genre. The grand majority of the running-time deals with Jiney's repressed memories of childhood abuse and her current thoughts of suicide, and it then starts to focus on her mental breakdown from said memories. The photography aspect is there to give us some nice visuals and to hold our interest, but the real story here is Jiney and her feelings towards both herself and the world that has wronged her in her eyes. The movie shifts gears in the last thirty minutes, but one certainly shouldn't go in expecting ninety minutes of either horror or thrills.
There's two twists to be found in this movie, and both take place during the aforementioned final thirty minutes where things shift gears. The first one is great, and I personally didn't see it coming. You see, once the mystery snuff-lover sends out the videotape to Jiney, it's pretty apparent to us at home who is responsible. Clues had been dropped, small details had been noticed, and we believe without a shadow of a doubt that we know who is responsible for sending the tape. I won't spoil what comes next, but that was a very effective and well thought-out scene. The second big twist comes near the end of the movie, where we find out who the real snuff-creator is and who was responsible for the tape. Was it the person that we believed it to be, or was it the person she met earlier in the movie, or was it someone completely unexpected? Yes, it's someone that she met earlier in the movie, and yes, it was someone completely unexpected... but this twist, in my eyes, was completely horrid and ended the movie on a very bad note. Keep in mind here that I have seen more than my share of Asian cinema and I know full-well what to expect from it. This is not one of those open-ended endings that leave you wondering what happened, and nor is it one of those confusing endings that leave you clueless as to what you just witnessed. No, when all is said and done, you'll know exactly what happened... but if the "it was all a dream" ending found in other films left you feeling cheated, then you'll definitely want your money back when the credits begin to roll on this one.
Now then, even though I felt that the ending of the film was beyond awful, the movie leading up to said ending worked out very nicely. Even though the storyline is more of a drama than anything, it did manage to hold my interest for the most part. Sure, there were a couple of scenes where I contemplated hitting that fast-forward button or taking a quick smoke-break, but I never gave in to either temptation. The vast majority of the film, however, was interesting and built up a damned fine storyline. Also, the top-notch visuals and scene setups that made The Eye so memorable have returned here, and it quickly becomes apparent that Oxide really knows how to get the maximum impact out of both his cast and the surrounding scenery. The balcony scene in which Jiney contemplates suicide is one of the most beautiful scenes that I have ever seen, and although describing it here wouldn't do it justice, it definitely ranks in my personal top-ten cinematic scenes. Finally, there's some nice "snuff" material to be found in the final scenes of the movie, and those of you who picked this one up expecting a horror would be pleased with the final payoff in that regard. Even though the actual content of these scenes could be considered tame in comparison to other films, the way that they are shot and the accompanying sound effects really make these a nauseating experience. Those with weak stomachs would be well-advised to turn their heads when Jiney puts that video tape into her VCR.
All in all, this was an enjoyable movie up until the closing moments where the movie-maker is revealed. That scene killed a lot of the enjoyment for me, and I honestly would have been happier with an open-ending finale in which s/he was never revealed than what we wound up with. That wasn't the case, however, and I really felt cheated by what appeared to be a cop-out ending when all was said and done. 6/10.
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#1:
Lucid Dreams
- added August 5, 2009 at 3:30pm
4/10 Movie was pretty boring and didn't know what
it was half the time. Either way good review
Chad.
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