Home Sweet Home
Director: Cheang Pou-soi
Year: 2005
Rating: 7.5
The name Cheang Pou-soi
is not likely to ring the bell of even Hong Kong film fans, but this director
has put together a fine filmography in a few short years. His films haven’t
done particularly well at the box office and have generally been low profile
affairs with small budgets. Most of them have fallen into the horror genre
which by itself can stick a director in Hong Kong into a lower class strata
(unlike in Japan) where they have a long history of being B-films. Besides
these horror films (“Horror Hotline . . . Big Headed Monster”, “New Blood”
and “Diamond Hill” (which was sort of a social family drama with elements
of horror)), Cheang also directed the terrifically tense “Love Battlefield”
that should have been a hit, but wasn’t. Strangely, the one high profile
film that he directed is by far his worst, the banal “Death Curse” with the
Twins and one can only hope that he did this for the money. With the
exception of that film, Cheang has brought out really fine performances from
his actors – Carrie Ng in “Diamond Hill”, Josie Ho in “Horror Hotline”, Niki
Chow in “New Blood” and Niki again along with perhaps Eason’s Chan’s finest
performance in “Love Battlefield”. In this film, Cheang gets two exhausting
and emotionally riveting performances from his two lead actresses.
Even though the film sputters a bit in its final third, this is Cheang’s
most assured work. He generates equal measures of tension and pathos that
have your emotions and nerve endings doing somersaults. The first hour of
the film is a bone gnawing finger eating (pun intended) rollercoaster ride
of tension before it suddenly slows down dramatically and shifts the mood
into one of utter melancholy that feels like a curve ball thrown at your head.
Whether the film would have been more effective had it stayed on its frantic
pace to the end is hard to say – probably commercially so – but the sudden
switch in perspective and mood forces the viewer to step back and see this
as less of a horror film and more as one of a personal and social tragedy.
This film is also a welcome break from the oodles of ghost films that have
permeated Asian horror for years now – yes Virginia a horror film can be
made without a long haired female ghost anywhere in sight. This one hones
in like an acetylene torch on fears much closer to home – just how vulnerable
your child always is. Any mother who sees this may be inclined to handcuff
their child to themselves afterwards and never let them go.
Ray (Alex Fong), his wife May (Hsu Chi) and their small son Chi Lo (Tam
Chun Ho) move into a spacious apartment in an affluent high rise complex.
Though left unspoken, one senses that there may be some psychological baggage
in their past and that May’s insular and fragile emotional state may be the
cause of it. Cheang doesn’t wait a minute before he begins working the nervous
agitation – while moving in the boy is tricked into an elevator, the doors
close and up he goes. In a panic, May searches for him but before finally
finding him she looks through the ventilator grates – and sees an odd frightening
creature rapidly climbing up the pipes. A few days later May is coaxed into
taking Chi Lo to a child’s birthday party within the building and he suddenly
vanishes. She frantically begins looking for him but the stone faced neighbors
don’t seem to care and only want her to stop creating a panic because it may
harm property values and the police (Lam Suet) seem more annoyed than concerned
with her hysterical pleas to find her son (this anti-police sentiment also
appears in “Love Battlefield”). In an earlier conversation with her son he
had asked her “Mom would you abandon me” to which she answered “Of course
not. Not even if you abandon me”. And she doesn’t as she hunts relentlessly
for her kidnapped son.
But he is in the ventilator system – held by a “monster” (an unrecognizable
Karena Lam) who thinks that he is her son and she is as intent on holding
on to him as May is in getting him back and the two desperately fight over
him within the narrow shafts and on the rooftop of the building. It is harrowing
at times and brutal at times and the two actresses give it all they have in
what must have been a test of physical endurance. Hsu Chi is terrific as
a mother on the verge of going insane with grief and frustration while under
her mounds of makeup and dirt Karena is able to capture your sympathies when
her back story is eventually revealed and near the end with only her eyes
as they display the enormous pent up pain and grief that she has lived through.
It is a killer. The film has its faults – mainly an overly long flashback
devoted to Karena’s character that stops the film dead in its tracks for
a while - and it feels as if possibly Cheang had to edit out some material
for time purposes as certain aspects of the film feel unexplained or unfinished
or not fully explored – but overall this one grabs you by the throat and
only barely lets you go.
Interestingly (or not), the DVD gives you an option of two choices – one
is a Horror version and the other a Drama version. I watched the Horror version
and then fast forwarded through the Drama version but didn’t see any discernable
differences. I may have missed them or perhaps Cheang is trying to say that
good real life horror is good drama and that’s certainly the case here.
