Troublesome Night 6
 
Director: Herman Yau
Year: 1999
Rating: 7.5
I found the sixth entry in this horror series to be a surprisingly taut little gem of a film that creates a spooky atmosphere and never veers away from it. Surprising, in that the previous Troublesome Night films were first of all anthologies (which this one is not) that consisted of three unconnected stories and also because they could be quite inconsistent. Like many HK horror films, the stories often resort to inappropriate humor to lighten things up, but this often results in destroying both the mood and pacing of the film.

Not this one though as it moves along at a rapid pace and never stops for comic relief or a pointless romance. A terrifically eerie score, a tight script and an involving story along with a no nonsense performance from Louis Koo creates a tense mood throughout. The viewer never is quite sure where the story is taking them until the very end – and even then a question lingers in the air.


A writer and photographer from a gossip magazine are going after another scurrilous story and they open an elevator to go upstairs. A woman in red is hanging inside. To get a better picture of her face they go inside to move her hair aside and suddenly the hanging figure reaches out for them. When the police force open the door later – the woman in red is gone, the writer is hanging from the ceiling with an umbrella stuck through him and the photographer is quivering in the corner – clearly having gone insane.

Louis Koo and Simon Loui are the investigative team and they soon come to the conclusion that something very strange is going on. Is the killer the ghost of a woman that died from a fall four years ago? If so, why is she after these people from the magazine? Another employee, Amanda Lee, is frightened for her life as well but won’t tell them why.
 

Koo though also realizes that something that happened to him one-night four years ago may have something to do with this case – but he was hit by a car and can’t recall what occurred. Slowly, it appears as if he may be going insane – as he begins having delusions about waking up in strange places, seeing corpses in a bed and a woman (Gigi Lai) in red. Or are they delusions? The viewer knows no more than Koo does as he struggles to follow the case and keep his sanity. What happened four years ago? I won’t go so far as to say this is a scary - look under your bed afterwards – film, but it will keep you guessing and has a definite edge to it. A thoroughly enjoyable film of this kind.