31 Days of Asian Horror: Hex (1980)

The Shaw Brothers’ take on the French film Les Diaboliques, Hex starts off as a fairly unsuspecting melodrama. A wealthy wife, Chan Sau Ying, has fallen ill and her abusive alcoholic husband Chun Yu is constantly making it worse, driving all their servants out until a new girl comes in, a daughter of a former servant who helped the wife’s family (Yi Wah). The husband brutally assaults Yi Wah which sets off a disastrous chain of events. The movie does a fairly good job at setting up the mystery and generally keeps it up through the reveals, but I felt that it hit a slump in the middle. That being said it was a decent watch and would recommend it to those who like supernatural plots that are more drama driven and depend less on gores and jump scares.

Hex is available for rent and on DVD.

+++

31 Days of Asian Horror: Vampire Cleanup Department (2017)

I probably should have planned things out a bit more so that I didn’t have two horror movies from Hong Kong back-to-back, but it’s vampire day and one of the movies that kept coming up when searching for options was the 2017 Vampire Cleanup Department, and I knew I was going to have to check it out.

In the early 1980’s, Hong Kong had an explosion of comedy/action/horror vampire films stemming from the popularity of the 1985 Mr. Vampire directed by Ricky Lau.. Vampire Cleanup Department is a spin-off of sorts, more an homage to the genre of films that were so popular. The movie takes elements from the original Mr Vampire that are most notable - vampires that hop and the way that vampires die - to update the story for a new era. Former Mr. Vampire franchise alumni Chin Siu Ho and Richard Ng star in the film. As for the movie, it has a fairly easy set up. After a brush with a vampire, Tim Cheung becomes an intern for a vampire hunting organization. While patroling one night he meets a female vampire and things start to spiral out of control when he falls for her. If you took Ghostbusters, replaced all of the ghosts with vampires, and added more mysticism and martial arts you’d get Vampire Cleanup Department.

The movie is wacky and campy, rarely letting go of the comedy and is entirely aware of it. Because of this, the comedy worked really well for me. I’m not usually into comedies that switch tones in and out too much and thought that all of the gags worked. From the way they introduce the unit, the jumping vampires that act more like mummies with fangs - it’s a constant ride of jokes and puns. While the movie was a fun way to spend a weekday night, it’s nothing that I would consider special or outstanding. It has sort of an interesting plot in the beginning, yet it doesn’t really make time for it to continue within the antics of everything going on and the by the second act the film heavily switches over the focus on the love story. I feel like this would have been a fun short series instead of just the movie so that we could get to know some of the other characters, which there are a good bit. All the characters are enjoyable, and there is a setup to a storyline with his parents that a series would give ground to an interesting backstory. This could have been intentially done, hoping that the movie would spawn a resurrection of the franchise, yet I can’t find any movement on that which kind of forces the movie to feel incomplete. That said, if you are in need of a low stress movie to watch for the Halloween season, especially if you have some older kids who will sit through a movie with you, I suggest giving it a try. While it doesn’t stick the landing, it was a good way to spend a couple of hours.

Vampire Cleanup Department is currently streaming at a number of places, inlcuding Viki, AsianCrush, and Tubi.

+++

31 Days of Asian Horror: The Eye (2002) vs The Eye (2008)

I tried to make some sort of “eye for an eye” pun but just couldn’t make it work.

Today I’m pairing the original horror film from 2002 directed by brothers Danny and Oxide Pang, The Eye, and it’s 2008 US remake of the same name (directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud) to talk more about them and discuss the differences between the two films and what I thought did - or didn’t - work. While I am going to try my best to keep out of major spoilers, I might have to venture into that land for a bit. Most of the movies I have picked for this month were selected beforehand, but this became a last-minute add when I sat down to watch the Pang Brother’s original the other night and was curious what the remake looked like. I had never actually seen the remake before watching, the movie came out my senior year of college and as a theatre major there was no way I had extra time for anything. But the movie is one of those from the 2000s that I would have gravitated towards if I had the time.

The two aren’t identical, which I will discuss below, the basic premise is the same for both. The main character has been blind for most of her life, and after receiving cornea implant surgery so that she would be able to see again, she starts noticing people and places that no one else can see and tries to figure out why it is happening to her.

Note: Since the remake shares the same name as the original, for purposes of this post when I refer to The Eye I’m talking about the 2002 version.

While both movies stay close to each other’s main storyline, I found that the interpretations of the remake were off and sometimes it effected the rest of the storyline. Take for instance the importance of the transplant surgery. In the original, the transplant is there for her and in the remake it’s almost like it’s there for the world. In The Eye she was part of a blind orchestra, and regaining sight meant that she lost her place and that aspect of normal life would be taken away from her, yet in the remake she’s not part of any special orchestra, she is the shining star both before and after the surgery. A lot of the remake tries to point towards her disability, as if to enforce how special she is when the character herself is very humble towards everything and the opportunity she was given.

This becomes a problem towards the middle of the movie when she is starting to collapse mentally because of the amount of ghosts she’s seeing. The remake tries to integrate it into the story that it was her against the world, when in the original those around her are concerned. She’s not seen as abnormally crazy, just not adjusting as well as she could be and it’s much more real. This difference also bleeds into the relationships she has. The Eye’s biggest pull is in the emotion it conveys through the characters. While there is tension and horror associated with the ghosts she sees, the movie constantly falls back to the human side. Her friendship with the young cancer patient and her relationship with the doctor bring the movie back into a grounded emotional state that we just don’t see with the remake. Her relationships are rushed in the remake and we don’t get a sense of who they are or who she is, more on what she is doing. Part of this could be that the focus was less on the characters, but it’s also due to pacing. For a shorter film, The Eye is excellent at it, giving you the information you need while allowing the relationships to mean something, even when the characters haven’t had much storytime together. The Pang brother’s are able to fill a moment with a lot of meaning and while watching the US remake (especially directly after) the drastic differences in the two are felt and you can really feel the unevenness of the pacing. The plot of the remake rushes to integrate these points, which is just not an obstacle for the original film.

The remake’s greatest misstep is shown in how it handles the way that she sees the ghosts. In the remake, there is an undertaker-type figure that she constantly sees is much more exaggerated because it focuses on death being the monster of the movie. The original makes a point to focus on the realness of death and that life has ending that must be accepted - no matter who it is. It’s not some crazy monster and neither good nor evil, just a part of life that is shown through the events at the end of the movie. The Eye’s main moral is that life is based on your outlook, and while the remake kind of gets there at the end it doesn’t do a whole lot to justify it and a lot of the changes that they make, specifically at the ending, don’t really work.

While I do think the remake is a good story on it’s own, it’s hard to not compare it to the original. I know I spent this entire comparison on all the points I didn’t like about the remake, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t enjoy it. If you are looking for a more action based film that focuses more on the gruesome haunts and frights without grounding itself in reality then its a good movie to watch. The set up is scary, and I don’t think Jessica Alba is bad in the role. It’s a perfectly fine one-off movie that wraps up nicely and wasn’t bad. I do like that it stayed pretty close to the overall stoyline from the original and do think that a good portion of what was changed was to make it fit with the audience they were shooting for. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In the end, the biggest difference between the two was where they focused the character’s motivations and emotions. The Eye took situations and grounded it in that emotion, while the remake would use it to heighten the superficial horror.

The Eye has two sequels: The Eye 2 and The Eye 10, both directed by the brothers. Besides the American remake it has spawned two other remakes: A Tamil version called Adhu and a Hindi version Naina.

The original is currently only available on DVD, but the remake is streaming on Peacock.

+++