Peg O’ My Heart
赎梦
Hong Kong, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 94 mins.
Director: Zhang Jiahui 张家辉 [Nick Cheung].
Rating: 5/10.
A clumsy screenplay and gratuitous VFX don’t help this psycho-horror to engage emotionally, despite some early promise and good supports.
STORY
Hong Kong, c. 2016-17. After terrible nightmares a 16-year-old girl, Lu Yongyi (Xu Enyi), tries to commit suicide and is found unconscious by her grandmother (Tan Jinmeng), who takes her to see a psychologist, Wen Shihao (Liu Junqian). He prescribes her medicine but also discovers she is pregnant by a young bum (Liang Yuquan), whom he forces to take responsibility for his actions. One night, Wen Shihao takes a ride with a taxi driver, Cai Xinqiang (Zhang Jiahui), who almost crashes the vehicle. The latter says he lost a lot of money on the stock market and hasn’t been sleeping well due to recurrent nightmares. Wen Shihao gives him his card but Cai Xinqiang throws it away. At work, Wen Shihao has been repeatedly accused of taking too much of a private interest in his patients’ backgrounds and is due to face another hearing with the senior management; the sympathetic hospital director, Michael Fu (Huang Zixiong), tells him it’s the last time he will defend him. Wen Shihao apologises again, saying he’s been suffering from repeated nightmares that he can’t remember whenever he wakes up. After a heated argument between Michael Fu and John, the general manager (Wu Jialong), Wen Shihao gets off with a final warning. Meanwhile, Cai Xinqiang’s home life is not helping his mental state: his wife, Ji Huiling (Chen Fala), is half-crazy and deeply superstitious, filling their flat with paper talismans and purifying her husband with fire and her own urine whenever he returns home. Exhausted from lack of sleep, Cai Xinqiang crashes his taxi in a tunnel and ends up in a psychiatric centre where, by chance, he becomes Wen Shihao’s patient. Cai Xinqiang pleads – unsuccessfully – to be allowed to return home, as his wife cannot cope without him. Meanwhile, Wen Shihao’s devoted assistant, Donna (Zhu Chenli), tries to help him with his own nightmare problem by introducing him to her former boss, now-retired psychologist and dream specialist Cheng Wensen (Liu Dehua). However, the meeting ends inconclusively with Wen Shihao not quite trusting him. Wen Shihao starts with a treatment for Cai Xinqiang that initially summons up all kinds of demons. Donna then discovers that Cai Xinqiang legally changed his name several years ago from Shen Zhuoren. Wen Shihao visits Ji Huiling, who starts screaming at him to let her husband go; Wen Shihao orders a social worker to be sent, as Ji Huiling clearly has a split personality and suicidal tendencies. Breaking his promise to his boss, Wen Shihao starts his own investigation into Cai Xinqiang’s past, meeting Tony (Zhang Songzhi), who worked with Cai Xinqiang – then known as Shen Zhuoren – for seven years at the same stockbroker. He was then known as a brilliant market analyst – until the financial crash of 2008 started to affect his reasoning, with tragic consequences for himself, his wife, and a close friend (Li Kaixian).
REVIEW
For his fourth feature as a director, Hong Kong actor Zhang Jiahui 张家辉 [Nick Cheung], 57, stays within the genres he knows best with Peg O’ My Heart 赎梦, a noirish drama of the supernatural in which an unorthodox psychologist and his taxi-driver patient both suffer from horrific nightmares. After the modest, Malaysia-set Hungry Ghost Ritual 盂兰神功 (2014), wacky exorcist exercise Keeper of Darkness 陀地驱魔人 (2015) and the umbrous crime drama The Trough 低压槽之欲望之城 (2018), this one initially looks like being Zhang’s most successful outing as an actor-director. But despite some nice character touches, coolly-shot visuals and plenty of promise, the film fails to deliver on an emotional level, with an increasingly maufactured feel, some clumsy contruction, and gratuitously horrific dream sequences. In a dismal year for Hong Kong films on home territory, it took some HK$12.2 million this spring, putting it in second place so far this year, fractionally behind CNY comedy Hit N Fun 临时决斗 (HK$12.5 million) and ahead of deaf drama The Way We Talk 看我今天怎么说 (HK$12.1 million). In the Mainland it took a nothing RMB5.6 million.
As with The Trough, Zhang also co-wrote the screenplay, this time with young journeyman Ling Weijun 凌伟骏 (One Second Champion 一秒拳王, 2020; Raging Fire 怒火, 2021; Man on the Edge 边缘行者, 2022; Tales from the Occult 失衡凶间, 2022). After a striking opening centred on a pregnant teenager, with nightmarish VFX trowled on, the script takes a left turn away from this mini-story and settles on a disturbed taxi-driver (played by Zhang himself, almost unrecognisable beneath floppy hair and moustache) who almost has an accident while driving the young psychologist (Liu Junqian 刘俊谦) who appeared earlier.
The paths of the two men – both of whom suffer from nightmares – are to cross again as the taxi-driver becomes the psychologist’s patient. Despite previous warnings from his superiors not to get involved in patients’ private lives, the psychologist uncovers the driver’s complex past, going as far back as the financial crash of 2008, some eight years earlier. His own history of nightmares and his edgy relationship with his widowed, care-home father also start to intrude as he tries to cure the taxi-driver with more and more unconventional sleep treatment.
With typically low-key playing by Zhang as the taxi-driver and only a solid performance by Liu (the young wannabe in Stuntman 武替道, 2024, the dog-like slave in The Lychee Road 长安的荔枝, 2025) as the psychologist, there’s not much going on at the top end of the film to engage the viewer emotionally. The other problem is that the screenplay has a forced feel, never really developing any shared tie between the two men’s history of nightmares – apart from the obvious one of individual guilt – to bind the whole movie together. Some clunky construction, like the third-act drama played out in a flashback, not on a dream level, doesn’t help. There’s a consistent feeling throughout the movie that it should be a very powerful experience but simply isn’t. An intelligent score, instead of the nothing one by journeyman composer Chen Guangrong 陈光荣 [Comfort Chan], could have helped to mitigate the problem.
Most of the emotional interest comes from the supporting roles, especially a subtle performance by TV actress Zhu Chenli 朱晨丽 (in her biggest film role to date) as the psychologist’s loyal assistant who rather likes him, as well as reliable veteran Yuan Fuhua 袁富华 as his aged father and China-born, US-raised Chen Fala 陈法拉 (good as the bipolar wife in Tales from the Dark 2 李碧华鬼魅系列 奇幻夜, 2013) as the taxi-driver’s now-nutty wife. Superstar Liu Dehua 刘德华 [Andy Lau] pops up unannounced for one weird scene that unfortunately leads nowhere. Technical credits, led by the crisp, clinical visuals by experienced d.p. Guan Zhiyao 关智耀 [Jason Kwan] and his use of a slight yellow tint in certain scenes, are all fine, and the VFX, though unfocused, o.t.t. and largely meaningless, are at least well rendered.
The film was shot entirely in Hong Kong during the winter of 2022/23 and had an overseas festival premiere almost a year before its Hong Kong release. Its Chinese title means “Redemption of Dreams”. The well-known US song, written in 1913 and used as the English title, crops up a handful of times on the soundtrack (sung by the late Joni James) and is always distracting, partly because it’s so catchy.
CREDITS
Presented by United Filmmakers Organization (HK), Film Development Fund of Hong Kong and CCIDAHK (HK).
Script: Zhang Jiahui [Nick Cheung], Ling Weijun. Photography: Guan Zhiyao [Jason Kwan]. Editing: Li Jiarong. Music: Chen Guangrong [Comfort Chan], Dai Wei, Yan Lixing. Production design: Huang Bingyao [Pater Wong]. Costumes: Guo Huiyan. Styling: Wang Baoyi. Sound: Chen Zhuoheng, Nopawat Likitwong. Action: Huang Weiliang [Jack Wong], Deng Ruihua. Car stunts: Zhang Weixun. Special effects: Chi Ruitian. Visual effects: Yang Minjie, Yang Wenjie (Milpicture).
Cast: Zhang Jiahui (Cai Xinqiang/Shen Zhuoren), Liu Junqian (Wen Shihao), Chen Fala (Ji Huiling/Fiona), Yuan Fuhua (Wen Shihao’s father), Zhu Chenli (Donna), Li Kaixian [Brian Siswojo] (Luo Dazhi/Chi), Yuan Qiwen (Wen Shihao’s mother), Xu Enyi (Lu Yongyi), Liu Dehua [Andy Lau] (Cheng Wensen/Vincent), Hu Jiaying (Luo Dazhi’s wife), Zhang Huiling (Luo Dazhi’s mother), Huang Zixiong (Michael Fu, hospital director), Wu Jialong [Carl Ng] (John, hospital general manager), Zhang Songzhi (Tony, stockbroker), Li Bide (Hua), Zhang Wenjie (Vincent’s bodyguard), Wang Zhi’an (gender-neutral customer), Tan Jinmeng (Lu Yongyi’s grandmother), Liang Yuquan (Lu Yongyi’s boyfriend).
Premiere: Far East Film Festival, Udine, Italy, 30 Apr 2024.
Release: Hong Kong, 27 Mar 2025.