Re-Cycle

                                                      
Director: The Pang Brothers
Year: 2006
Rating: 5.0
The Pang Brothers had already produced the three Eye films dealing with ghosts. Being from Thailand but of Chinese ancestry, this isn't too surprising. Both cultures have a long tradition of ghost tales. This film certainly leads you down a ghostly path or so it seems with a long-haired apparition that feels as if it skipped out of a J-Horror film. But then it suddenly and inexplicably takes a detour for the rest of the film that pulls the viewer into completely different territory. One of guilt and regret. It is as if Alice fell down a hole into Dante's circles of hell as if pictured by Heironymus Bosch at his most lurid. And then like Dorothy, she has to take a trip to get back home again. But there is no yellow brick road to follow. Just an old man who gives her money for the dead and a little girl who guides her through zombies, aborted fetuses, suicides, phantoms and giant toys. If this sounds nonsensical, that is because it is. It feels as if the Pangs just wanted an opportunity to go hog wild with creepy imagery and the use of CGI. At the end we have no idea if this was just a bad dream, a hallucination, insanity, writer's block or karma.



Ting-yin (Angelica Lee Sinje who had starred in the Pang's The Eye) is a successful author of romance novels but is having trouble with her next novel which she wants to be a supernatural story. At a press conference, she is asked if she has ever seen a ghost. She says no, but she would like to in order to enhance her writing. Perhaps inviting ghosts was a bad idea. She keeps sensing another person in her spacious apartment, finds long black hairs and gets phone calls that are static. An old boyfriend from eight years ago wants to get together, but she wants nothing to do with him.



Then the film goes dark. She takes an elevator down with an old lady and small girl and those two. sink through the floor. She goes outside and finds herself in a post-apocalyptic environment. Buildings crumbling, trash and waste everywhere, people jumping from the top of buildings and then getting up. Figures darting in the shadows. A giant ferris wheel spinning. She handles it better than I would and just keeps moving. She spots a man (Lau Siu-ming) sitting who tells her she doesn't belong here and if she stays, she will be recycled. She next finds a little girl (Zheng Qi Qi) who promises to take her to the Transit Point where she can get home. No clicking of heels. It is very strange and until the last few minutes has no emotional ballast because you sense none of this can be real. And if it is, why her? Then it hits you with a bit of a gut punch.