Going into “Tormented”, I wasn’t excited about this film. Maybe, it was the fact that I hated Takashi Shimizu’s last film “The Shock Labyrinth”. Still, I decided to check this film, just out of curiosity.

The film follows Daigo, a kid who doesn’t speak ever since he killed a rabbit on a playground. He also gets bullied at school. His sister Kiriko becomes worried that she’s losing touch with him and their father doesn’t care about them, as he has problems of his own. One day Kiriko takes Daigo to see a 3D horror film with a rabbit floating out of the screen. Once that happens, Daigo goes missing mysteriously. Now Kiriko must find him in a world of nightmares. But what she finds is more shocking then the truth.

At the end of “Tormented”, I was really surprised that I enjoyed this than I was going to. Even with its flaws and its ending, the film still managed to keep me interest throughout.

Most of that has to go to the direction of Takashi Shimizu, who manages to direct instead of trying to be over the top with the way that he directs. One of the reasons was, he carefully doesn’t rush the pace of the film. Shimizu does a good job making sure his scenes have rhythm that is accustomed to the tone of the film. It made the scenes work very well from a directorial standpoint, as they felt creepy enough and build tension onscreen. The other thing he manages to do well was the way that he directed the performances. I thought, this was a much better acted film than “Shock Labyrinth”. Shimizu takes his time to make his cast make their characters interesting and fit the tone of the film. The performances didn’t feel one dimensional and it also made the story interesting as none of the acting felt boring.

The screenplay was good for the most part, except the ending which I’ll talk about later. Shimizu along with screenwriters Sotaro Hayashi and Daisuke Hosaka did a good job with the way they came up with the screenplay. I liked, the way that they made the story very creepy though the visual aspects of the screenplay. It gave the film a level of creepiness which was needed to make the story work. If you take away that, then you’re stuck with a boring film. The other thing that makes this good was the fact that the flashback sequences helped develop the main character and maintained the film’s tone without hurting the film’s rhythm. The flashback sequences added to the film, as there was a purpose to them and takes the film into a different direction that isn’t confusing.

The only complaint that I have with the film was the ending. The last ten minutes were predictable, as I had an idea what was going to happen. I don’t like when a writer or writers do that. It just puts 2 and 2 together so easily at the end of the film that it takes away from the film. Surprisingly that was the only complaint with this film, as I thought that I would have many more going in.

This was a very solid effort from Takashi Shimizu, as this was a much better film than his last dreadful outing. With good direction and performances, “Tormented” is worth checking for fans of Japanese horror.

Review Rating: Three and a Half Stars

The next film in our Asian Film Showcase is “Bangkok Revenge”. The film is about a man, who saw his parents killed at ten years old by a vicious gang. He was left for dead until he is recused by the master of Muay Thai boxing. But the attack left with a brain injury that leaves him without any human emotion.

Fast forward twenty years, he sets on a quest for vengeance. With his fists, feet and bloody vengeance at his side, he’s out to find those who are responsible and make them pay.

Going into “Bangkok Revenge”, I was hoping that it was going to be a very good movie. It was billed as an action packed film with good martial action. I never thought the action would be the component that would ruin the film for me, as this felt like a film with no story.

Jean –Marc Mineo’s direction was very flat. One of the things that I didn’t like about the direction, the scenes felt rushed. He doesn’t do anything to make the scenes feel exciting. Maybe, it’s the fact that the scenes felt like they were going ninety miles per hour to the point that they were repetitive. It made me lose track of what was going on. The other thing that makes Mineo’s direction dreadful was the way he handling the acting. The acting was just awful. The cast didn’t make the characters engaging, instead they made their characters very dull. Mineo doesn’t do anything to make the performances work. Instead, I was watching a film with all action and very dull characters. It almost put me to sleep watching the performances.
The screenplay was flat out horrible. One of the reasons was there wasn’t any plot or character development at all. Mineo doesn’t even try to slow the story down to allow any plot or character development. Every time I tried to become interested in the main character, he would put in action sequences that would kill any chance of development. When that happens, the film is just a collection of action scenes with characters that nobody cares about.

Speaking of action scenes, the other thing that makes this screenplay a failure was that that was the fact that there was too many of them. With a running time of 82 minutes, it felt like two thirds of it was devoted to action sequences. Mineo clearly focusing more on the action sequences than creating a story that could’ve make the characters interesting, as it made me very bored very quickly and I was losing interest in this film by the half way mark. I wished he’d making the characters interesting enough that I cared about them, because it would have made his screenplay better and I would have enjoyed this film. Instead, this was a complete mess from top to bottom.

“Bangkok Revenge” is one of those films that looked good on paper. But it reality, it’s a very repetitive action film with no story or interesting characters.

Review Rating: One Star.

Well Go USA recently send us over information and the official trailer for their upcoming release "Sadako 3D". The film is latest installment in the very terrifying "Ring" franchise and is directed by Tsutomu Hanabusa.

Press Release:

The most iconic figure in Asian horror returns for the latest installment in the frightening RING franchise with SADAKO 3D, debuting on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital June 4th from Well Go USA Entertainment. Director Tsutomu Hanabusa (High School Review) brings back the long haired girl in the white nightgown and her reign of terror has extended from television screens to all forms of technology: PC screens, mobile phones, jumbotrons and more. The cast includes Satomi Ishihara (Moonlight Mask), Kôji Seto (Runway Beat), Tsutomu Takahashi (Aragure) and Shôta Sometani (The Intermission). Akane Aikawa (Ishihara) works as a teacher in a high school where students are mysteriously committing suicide after viewing a video hosted on the internet. She discovers that a deranged artist is trying to bring Sadako back to life!

Synopsis:

Sadako waits, a vicious spirit, hungry for blood and souls. What began as a haunted videotape, passed from hand to cursed hand all those years ago in THE RING, has only gotten easier to find. Sadako waits. And it’s not just on tape anymore. At a local high school, there is a rumor about an online video of someone committing suicide. If it were only a prank, or the work of a deranged artist in town, the students wouldn’t be killing themselves after watching it, would they? The police would have a theory about the quickly-growing body count? And what about the woman in white with long hair? Sadako is always hungry. And she’s no longer alone.

SADAKO 3D has a runtime of approximately 97 minutes and is not rated.

"Sadako 3D": Official Trailer

Well Go USA recently released the official trailer for their upcoming DVD and Blu-Ray release of "Back to 1942", which hits DVD and Blu-Ray the film stars Adrien Brody (Predators,The Pianist), Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption), Daoming Chen and Fan Xu.

Press Release:

Director Xiaogang Feng follows up his blockbuster movie, Aftershock, with BACK TO 1942, an unflinching portrayal of one of the darkest periods in China's history. The thought-provoking film debuts on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital May 14th from Well Go USA Entertainment. Starring Academy Award® winners Adrian Brody (Best Actor, The Pianist, 2002) and Tim Robbins (Best Supporting Actor, Mystic River, 2003) this tragic retelling of historical events is based on Zhenyun Liu’s best selling novel Remembering 1942. The Henan province disaster, where three million people died of starvation, was a humanitarian crisis first sparked by drought, then compounded by a combination of windstorms, government corruption and a war with Japan. In the midst of the devastation, an American journalist (Brody) searches for answers, and slowly comes to understand that there may be a greater connection between these tragedies and his political theories than he once thought. The film also stars Daoming Chen (Aftershock), Xu Fan (Aftershock), Fiona Wang (Aftershock, 1911) and Zhang Guoli (The Founding of a Republic).

Synopsis:
During the 1942 famine, with his house beset by starving villagers, Landlord Fan (Zhang Guoli) attempts to calm the crowd by preparing a feast. However, his house is burned down in the chaos, prompting Fan, his teenage daughter (Fiona Wang), his servant (Zhang Mo), and his tenant (Xu Fan) to embark on a treacherous journey south, struggling for survival as war with Japan looms on the horizon. Along the way, they encounter an American journalist (Adrian Brody), a judge (Dan Wei) and a priest (Zhang Hanyu) who has lost his faith. Each meeting reveals the true depth of the despair that grips the country, but the hardships along the way prompt Fan to make some devastating sacrifices that leave him a broken man.

"Back to 1942": Official Trailer

“Wu Dang takes place in the early days of the Republican China, where a treasure is hidden in the mountains. An American man looking for riches brings his daughter to martial arts competition, so that she can compete in a tournament in Kung Fu combat. He plans to find the gold that is located in that area. It won’t be easy for him, as dedicated protectors and a budding romance threaten his plans. Soon the true nature of the prize is revealed and everything changes for him.
There are some films that you truly like all the action, but the film falls flat as a whole when it comes down to the essentials. That was truly the case with “Wu Dang”.

The direction for the most part was okay. The action component was very good. I liked how director Patrick Leung and his action director Corey Yuen carefully planned the film’s action scenes. There were some sequences in the film that grab your attention. Both of them made sure that those scenes stand out. It made the fight sequences good, even though this film felt like it had no screenplay. The acting aspects were not good. Leung doesn’t do a good job trying to make the performances aspects work as a whole. These characters were good during the action sequences, but there was no life in the cast performances when it came down to the film’s dialogue. I was bored watching these actors trying to deliver dialogue without any emotion. At the end of the day, the performances do matter even if the action sequences are good. Sadly, there wasn’t much attention paid to that aspect.

When you sitting there and thinking about other things, during a movie then the story is a complete failure. That’s what I felt with this film’s screenplay. The screenplay written by Chan Kahn was flat out awful. This film had bad screenplay all over it, when you feel out of place in the film’s story at the beginning. I felt like, there was something missing that could’ve developed the main character’s relationship with his daughter instead of jumping into an action scene right away. It made me not care about the characters. After a couple of action sequences after that, I lost interest in this film. The film just got worse from there. Kahn doesn’t do anything to try and save the screenplay. Instead, the film continues to make more mistakes.

Another thing that I didn’t like about this film was the characters. For an action film like this to work, you need characters to be likeable and not dull. That was one of the main reasons that I lost interest in the story. I know that this is a foreign language film, but you need the characters to be interesting. I was bored watching them. And finally, the film felt like it had no plot. He spends most of his time trying to come up with fight sequences. That hurts any chance for any character development.

This is one of those films, where I hate to give the dreaded rating. I thought the fight scenes were good, but the acting and screenplay hurts “Wu Dang” from becoming at least a watchable film.

Review Rating: One Star

“Doomsday Book” starts off my Asian cinema month here at Filmarcade.net, as I’ll be reviewing various films from Asia this. I’ve been looking forward to “Doomsday Book” for a while, since I heard about it at last year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. At the festival, the film won the Cheval Noir Award for Best Film. It’s directed by Yim Pi-sung (Hansel & Gretel) and Kim Jee-Woon (I Saw the Devil and the recent Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Last Stand). That alone drew interest for this film.

The film is about what happens on the other side of technology and the innovations it makes. Korea has become ground zero for a zombie apocalypse, as the rotten trash of one man has spawned it. A repairman is struggling while a robot is trying to find a higher mind, as he challenges the idea of consciousness. The end of the world is caused by one family’s billiard ball and a misguided internet order. All these stories make up the sci-fi/horror film called ”Doomsday Book”.

I was surprised that this wasn’t your typical sci-fi/ horror film, which I thought it was going to be. Still, it’s very original and different from most films that you’ll see.

There were three stories that were all stand alone. It was good that it was the formatted that way, because of all the weirdness that was going on within each of the stories. It had a nice flow to the film.

First, you had Yim Pi-sung’s “Brave New World”, which was the weakest of the three films. The segment had good direction for Pi-sung, as he does a very good job directing the zombie action. It was different than your normal zombie film, as it focused more on the zombies and how the fact that they can recognize each other. The last five minutes of that film is what made the segment work for me, as it felt like it was going downhill in the middle by focusing on the politics of the zombie apocalypse instead of the of the problem at hand. The next segment was the best segment of the bunch, Kim Jee-Woon’s “The Heavenly Creature”. What made that segment very good was the way that Je-Woon handles everything. From the screenplay to his directing, everything was dead on. He carefully makes sure that the story generates a response, by creating main characters that are likable and interesting. The other thing that I liked about watching this segment was the movement of the robot. Je-Woon and his team did a very job in making the movements of the robot look very lifelike. I don’t know if this was done remote control or CGI, it felt very lifelike and special. This is one of the best piece of filmmaking that I’ve seen so far this year. The film wraps up Pi sung’s “Happy Birthday”. This was a much better segment than his first one. Pi-sung does a very good job making the characters quirky. Whether it’s the screenplay or the way that he directs the acting, it made the characters and the story interesting and different. The other thing that I liked about this story was that it kept the focus mostly on the family and not at the conflict at hand. This could have been your typical end of the world story with characters trying prevent a disaster, but this focuses more on the family dynamic while not getting too weird.

Overall, I had a good time with “Doomsday Book”. With good direction and entertaining stories, this film is worth a viewing if you’re into Asian horror/sci-fi.

Review Rating: Three and a half stars.