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Review
by Kozo: |
Based on a popular
Internet novel, Naraka 19 is Hong Kong's latest
attempt at the youth-targeted horror film, and is
dressed up with pseudo-psychological themes and generous
helpings of CG. Carol Lai (The Floating Landscape)
directs this labored, but still intriguing effort,
which stars one of those ever-popular Twins girls.
Gillian Chung is the Twin du jour this time;
Chung plays Rain, a perfect-complexioned princess
who checks into a college dormitory suite along with
pals Mandy (Bonnie Xin), Violet (new EEG starlet Vincy),
and Eva (Maggie Li). The suite is your standard used-and-abused
four-person room, except this place comes with bad
karma: back in 1997, bohemian stud Gao Yuan (Jones
Xu) offed himself in the same room, and the bad times
are now coming home to roost. Not only is Gao Yuan
seemingly wandering the halls of the school in 2007,
but the quartet of girls seem to be following him
to Hell, one-by-one.
The "Hell" on offer here
isn't figurative, but actually literal. The title
is a reference to the 18 levels of Hell described
in Buddhist lore ("Naraka" is Sanskrit for the underworld
- yay, Wikipedia!), and somehow the girls of Naraka
19 manage to enter a "game" where they travel
to each level of Hell, in hopes of passing through
them all and reaching a fabled 19th level. The means
of playing this game are like this: the girls get
invited via a text message, and at the appointed time,
they manage to warp into a level of Hell represented
onscreen via copious CG. They must face obstacles
- some personal, some physical - before making it
to the exit, thus solving the level and earning them
passage to the next level. If they don't pass the
level, then they go mad, which in the real world means
they sometimes do something really severe, like killing
themselves. Eva is the first player of the game, and
her skills obviously lack, because she offs herself
right in front of Rain's pretty little eyes. The mystery
of Eva's death is what draws Rain into the game. That,
and she can't ignore her SMS messages asking her to
play. Modern technology: it's a curse.
Of course, kids dying is
not a good thing, which is why Inspector Yip (Shaun
Tam a.k.a.: son of Ti Lung) gets involved. A sloppy cop
who dislikes using elevators, Yip's investigation
starts with the girls and grows to encompass the history
of the school, which includes Gao Yuan and his legacy
of death. The big secrets behind the "game" are a
combination of the occult and watered-down Buddhist
lore mixed with modern technology, and explaining
it all would be a spoiler. It could also be quite
exhausting, as the ins-and-outs of Naraka 19 are rather involved, and the film takes so long to
dispense its answers that it threatens to alienate
first. The movie leaps very quickly into its visions
of Hell, and the characters seldom behave in a rational
manner, i.e. nobody really stops to question their
sudden flirtation with eternal damnation. Their denseness
is ultimately explained away, though the explanation
is not overt, and the girls' continued freak-outs
start to become laughable long before they make sense.
Is the game these girls are playing supernatural in
nature, or is it psychological? Are the girls really
visiting Hell, or are they just trapped in their own
minds? What's with the dog shadow seared into the
wall? Why can't the girls just turn off their mobile
phones to stop playing? And could the identity of
the villain behind the game be any more obvious?
In the early going, Naraka
19 has a hard time convincing. The relatively
quick pace introduces fantastic ideas and concepts
so quickly that the audience barely has time to buy
in. The film's vision of Hell also feels initially
fake, because it's rendered in Re-cycle-like
CG, and employs many RPG-like concepts, including
the use of a mobile phone as a user interface. The
girls can use their mobile phones to show them the
level's exit, plus get convenient text messages offering
hints or tips. The phone can even be used to select
weapons or choose paths, and the existence of completion
bonuses and level-skipping furthers the cheesy video
game flavor of the film. Not aiding matters is the
acting, which is rather uninspired. Gillian Chung
makes a fetching terror victim, but brings little
to the proceedings besides her omnipresent adorable
looks, which never seem to get mussed. The other girls
range from passable to decent, while Shaun Tam and
Patrick Tam (no relation) provide effective, nondescript
support. As a down-and-dirty horror film, Naraka
19 falls short because it's not disturbing or
frightening enough to really connect to the audience.
There is one implied grisly moment early on in the
film, but after that the film is rather tame, settling
for camera-induced tension and shock sound effects.
Still, the mystery of Naraka
19 is interesting, and Carol Lai manages to get
some tension going through effective cross-cutting
and competent commercial technique. A lot of this
stuff isn't new, e.g. the pounding soundtrack, cold
colors, and deadly-serious tone, but Lai uses it all
decently, delivering a commercial thriller that could
entertain the film's target audience. That audience
- teens and young adults - would presumably settle
for the photogenic young stars, their nifty mobile
phone games, and the potentially dark fates that may
or may not await them. Adults may not feel as charitable
towards Naraka 19, as much of the film seems
derivative, and the details, while intriguing, ultimately
go nowhere. Naraka 19 resembles Lai's last
film, the slasher-horror flick The Third Eye,
in that both possess effective technique. However,
both are also loaded with portentous psychobabble
and intriguing, but empty details. Ultimately, Lai
resorts to a marathon of exposition and explanation
to connect all the dots, and while the answers are
welcome, they don't provide an adequate payoff to
everything that came before.
Naraka 19 ends ambiguously,
which could be bad or good, depending on what you
want. Those who like their movies tied up in neat
little packages may feel unfulfilled, because it's
not clear what the ending really accomplishes. Some
characters face their personal demons head on, but
the fates of others are left hanging, if not simply
forgotten. Also, most of the characters are patently
uninteresting and only register because they're photogenic
or eat up lots of screen time. This lack of any affecting
emotion renders Naraka 19 more of a clinical
experience than a primal one. The best horror pictures
manage to find identifiable emotions between the scares,
jumps, and screams, and Naraka 19 doesn't do
that, falling a step behind stuff like Re-cycle or even Diary. Still, Naraka 19 can
be interesting, and manages to improve from a flat-footed
and alienating start to become a watchable, albeit
shallow ride. Ultimately, Naraka 19 is little
more than an average commercial film for teens, and
hits its marks well enough that dissing it for not
being great cinema would probably be too harsh. And
besides, the filmmakers find room among these levels
of Hell to throw in a sly meta-reference to that inescapable
phenomenon known as the Twins. For some people, it
could cause groans, but for Twins fans, the reference
is probably Heaven. Naraka 19 is for that second
group. (Kozo 2007) |
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