Troublesome Night 8
Director: Edmond Yuen
Year: 2001
Rating: 5.0
It
must be nice having a mother who is in tune with demons and evil and knows
how to combat them. It comes in handy when there is a ghost next door. This
Troublesome Night film has only the one story which is a problem as they
have enough material for a 30-minute segment. Not quite sure why they have
gone from three segments to one - budget I expect. But they need to stretch
it out like a rubber band ready to snap. The good 30 minutes all comes in
the end and is around mom (Helena Law Lan) trying to find salvation for a
ghost and not kill her son by doing so. Lots of cool spells. She is the best.
Simon Lui introduces the film with a rant
against the quality of Hong Kong films and how hard it is to find work in
the industry. Out of a job, he, his mother, his brother and his very cute
and jealous girlfriend Moon (Halina Tan) have to move out to the New Territories
where living is cheap. A bad sign is that the landlord's office is covered
with the yellow talisman papers to ward off evil. So is blood coming out
of the shower head and a toilet seat that slams shut. He is immediately attracted
to their neighbor Olive (Nadia Chan - TN 6, 7, 8) but when he sees her remove
her head he isn't sure if it was a dream or not.
Mom immediately sniffs out trouble of the
supernatural kind and strikes a deal with the landlord - for six months free
rent, I will get rid of the evil here. The ghost who has possessed Olive
isn't really bad, she just wants to find her child who went missing when
she died. Mom knows best and sets up a blood ceremony with her younger son
to be a vessel for the boy who explains how he died. Not even remotely scary
but a good story with a bit of pathos by the end and some humor along the
way. But it just takes way too long to get there.
