Spoiler-free Reviews of older movies! Facetious remarks in red.

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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Three... Extremes (2004, R)

Man, the title of this one does not lie!  This is an anthology of 3 short horror films from different parts of Asia.  The first segment is a Chinese film entitled Dumplings, and was later made into a feature-length film of the same title which is also available to stream on Netflix.  Dumplings stars Bai Ling (Crank 2: High Voltage, The Crow... as well as a couple episodes of Angel and Lost) as a woman who makes some magical dumplings that restore youth and virility to women.  When she says to her client in the film "Don't think about what it was, think about what it will do for you," I should have known to ask myself this question: if there is anything in the world that I don't want to find out she's eating, then I should turn this off right now.  I didn't ask myself the question and I didn't turn it off, much to my horror.  It's an effective piece at evoking shock and awe in the audience (or me at least), so I have to give it that much credit, but it is not for the weak (or only moderately strong) of heart.


The second segment is Korean and about a film director who, along with his wife, gets abducted by a stalker.  Still kind of gory, but not nearly has hard to handle as the first segment.  It does have some good feeling of helplessness and twisted individuals (character, not creator) that make a good -but different kind of- horror story.  Some part of this second segment reminds me of Oldboy, but I'm not sure quite what about it... maybe it's some aspect of the visual style.

The third segment is a sort of a ghost story as the main character is a woman novelist who is haunted by part of her youth in a small circus.  The story moves slowly and kind of jumps around different periods of her life without warning or explanation, so it's kind of hard to follow, but I think its general effect on the pacing and story was a positive one.  I'm not sure what country this story is from.

In general, I think the story is good for fans of Asian horror movies and horror anthologies, but anyone else probably won't enjoy it very much.  I think they really lead with their strongest story (the plot didn't have a lot of character development, but it had the most shock and fit the anthology's title most effectively)... so if you can handle the first one, you can handle it all.  I didn't get as much out of it as I have from other horror stories, so I can't really give it more than 3 stars.

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