I just finished watching Re-Cycle, a Chinese horror movie known in the east as
. It is the latest and greatest film out of Hong-Kong that I've seen, and watching this forced me to face the realization that I'd completely wasted my time watching The Ring and Dark Water. Perhaps it would have been more to my benefit to watch the original versions rather than the fuckups from the US.At any rate, the first feeling one gets from the spookier bits is an air of familiarity. I couldn't help but compare what I was seeing and hearing to Silent Hill; the filmmakers decided to utilise dim lighting and dilapidated setwork seemingly inspired from that series, not to mention tense moments punctuated by a very Yamaoka-ish score. It didn't really help that they used the reprise of "Promise" from Silent Hill 2 in the deleted scenes montage.
It starts off creepily enough, but about halfway through it forgets it's a horror movie and does this sort of Taiwanese Alice in Wonderland thing as the main character tries to escape The Nothing by jumping from set to set with Exposition Girl in tow. It's not until shortly after the Hall of Fetuses that the director remembers what he's doing and reintroduces the big bad, who's apparently been on the protagonist's tail the whole time. After a stop in a field of flowers, we learn that the undead don't accept credit cards and are led to the resolution that, while a tad preachy, is still rather touching. Of course, like most good horror what haunts us never really leaves and oh my did I spoil that? You should be ashamed if you expected anything else.
I could take the movie apart further but when it comes down to it I enjoyed myself amid the fantastically-realised visuals and well-characterised lead and her phantom cohort.
