The Child’s Eye 3D
童眼
Hong Kong, 2010, colour, 1:85:1, 3-D, 97 mins.
Directors: Peng Shun 彭顺 [Oxide Pang], Peng Fa 彭发 [Danny Pang].
Rating: 3/10.
Unimaginative horror movie, with six haunted youngsters in an old Bangkok hotel, is shock lite.
STORY
Bangkok, Nov 2008. Six young holidaymakers from Hong Kong are stranded in Bangkok when the airport is occupied by demonstrators demanding the prime minister’s resignation: Rainie (Yang Chenglin) and Le (Yu Wenle), who are on the verge of breaking up; Ling (Jiang Ruolin) and her brother Rex (He Junwei); and Ciwi (Lin Simin) and her boyfriend Xi (Xu Zhengxi). Their driver takes them to the old Chong Tai Luan Hotel 中泰联宾馆, run by Quan (Lin Jiadong), where strange things start happening as soon as they arrive: Rainie sees a female ghost and Ling a disembodied hand. At dinner that night, the three men mysteriously disappear. Under Rainie’s leadership, the three girls – helped by the young Wenwen and her ghost-seeing dog Little Huang – set out to try and find them in the hotel’s underground passages, in between being haunted by the female ghost and a strange monster.
REVIEW
Hong Kong’s first 3-D horror movie, and the first Hong Kong production entirely shot in 3-D and HD, The Child’s Eye 3D 童眼 is not as lame as The Eye 10 见鬼10 (2005), the previous entry in the Eye cycle by the Peng Brothers 彭氏兄弟, but it only delivers a couple of real shocks in the whole of its 97 minutes, despite the use of stereoscopy. The fault, as with so many of the brothers’ films, lies in the script, which generates little characterisation among its six young leads (actually three, for most of the film) and relies purely on eerie sound effects, sudden crashes on the soundtrack and ghost/monster shots for its horror. Directing twins Peng Shun 彭顺 [Oxide Pang] and Peng Fa 彭发 [Danny Pang] still don’t seem to have realised that the best horror movies always have strong psychological underpinnings which derive from a well-worked script.
Taiwan’s Yang Chenglin 杨丞琳 (Spider Lilies 刺青, 2007) makes the strongest impression as the most pro-active of the girls, though she’s given a very limited character to work with. As her boyfriend, Hong Kong’s Yu Wenle 余文乐 [Shawn Yue] is largely in an extended guest role, and disappears for most of the movie, which is a long trudge to an underwhelming finale. The film makes occasionally effective use of 3-D, though in a conventional way – a jumping monster, a disembodied hand reaching into the audience – and won’t lose much viewed flat. (The film also appears dully lit when viewed through 3-D glasses.) A brief visual effects bonanza recalls hellish imagery from the Pengs’ Re-cycle 鬼域 (2006), and the best staged section of all is actually a street riot outside the leads’ hotel rather than any of the more claustrophobic scenes inside it.
CREDITS
Presented by Universe Entertainment (HK). Produced by Enable Film Production (HK).
Script: Peng Shun [Oxide Pang], Peng Fa [Danny Pang], Peng Baicheng [Thomas Pang]. Photography: Decha Srimantra, Gu Yibin [Sam Koa]. Editing: Peng Zhengxi [Curran Pang]. Music: Origin Kampanee. Music production: Payont Permsith. Art direction: Nuth Chimprasert. Costume design: Surasuk Warakitcharoen. Visual effects: Wu Xuanhui (Fat Face Production). Creative direction: Wu Xuanhui. 3-D: Digital Magic.
Cast: Yang Chenglin (Linni/Rainie), Jiang Ruolin (Ling), Lin Jiadong [Gordon Lam] (Quan), Gu Zulin (Quan’s wife), Lin Simin (Si/Ciwi), Xu Zhengxi (Xi), He Junwei (Lei/Rex), Yu Wenle [Shawn Yue] (Le, Rainie’s boyfriend).
Premiere: Venice Film Festival (Out Of Competition), 4 Sep 2010.
Release: Hong Kong, 14 Oct 2010.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 5 Sep 2010.)