Once again Angelica Lee treads softly into the world of ghosts. Perhaps The Eye prepared her for this. Because she handles ghosts rather well. "Since you are here, you may as well help get dinner ready" she says to a ghost with little of her face left. Or coming home to your apartment with all the furniture covered in sheets, the lights don't work and an uncovered chair is facing the door. Most of us would check into a hotel and come back the next day with a Taoist priest but not Angelica. This is an odd little film in Tsui Hark's filmography - almost missing in any discussion of his work. It is on the surface a horror film, a genre that Tsui hasn't really ever delved into other than perhaps his second film We're Going to Eat You. It came in that period from 2001 to 2009 where Tsui seemed adrift in which direction he wanted to go. After so many classics in the 1980s and 90s in which he almost reworked Hong Hong cinema, there were no films during this time that felt important. He had lost his mojo. And perhaps he will never make another film on the level of Once Upon a Time in China, Green Snake or Peking Opera Blues, but he did bounce back in 2010 and has made some films that are reviewed quite well. I have been remiss in watching most of them.


I would say for most of us the greatest horror that we have to deal with in our lives is the death of those we love and the immense grief that follows you like a chain of pain. This horror film plunges into grief and its unrelenting hold on you. At least for the first half of a too long nearly 120 minute film. At the half way mark though it changes everything up and really turns from horror to more of a modern Chinese folk-lore tale that could have been taken out of Pu Songling's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio - a source that Tsui Hark had used before. This was written by him though and it initially feels confusing and mystifying as it jumps around with quick editing cuts but later you realize the reason for that. The film is beautifully shot with wonderful interior designs (ah, to have an apartment like that in Hong Kong) and compositions, some solid special effects, creepy ghosts and great sound which plays a prominent part in the film. But I have yet to see a review that likes it and I think that may have to do with high expectations of Tsui Hark or the switch in mood at the halfway mark. It becomes nearly a different movie. Or of course perhaps they just didn't like it! I did but wish it was shorter and that the end had more impact. But it is a lovely film to watch visually.


Angelica is a psychiatrist whose patient played by Isabelle Leung introduces her to her brother played by Guo Xiao-dong. Angelica and Guo quickly fall in love and decide to go on a scuba diving trip off of a Japanese island along with the sister. The next scene has Angelica at his funeral service - he died and they only recovered his body without a head. She has a fight with Isabelle at the temple that doesn't make any sense to us but afterwards she returns to work in Hong Kong. The weight of grief though is crushing her and she can't remember what happened while they were diving. A patient of hers played by Chang Chen is also crushed by grief for his girlfriend who died. He tells Angelica that she is visiting him and he doesn't know if he wants her to because she terrifies him or for her to stop because then he is overcome from loneliness. Me too Angelica says. I want to see Guo. He is here says Chang who it seems can see ghosts.


It gets quite creepy - his head is apparently found and is sent to her in a box that she wants to open to be with him, even having a fish in her tank banging its head against the glass wall till it breaks and a ghost who has killed himself hanging from her ceiling with blood dripping down his arms. She can't understand why. She needs to know how he died. She goes to her colleague Tony Leung Ka-fai asking for him to hypnotize her but more horrors emerge. And then it turns. Into something very different. A love story. A ghostly one.