Home Sweet Home
The name Cheang Poi-sou is not likely to ring
the bell of even Hong Kong film fans, but this director has put together
a fine filmography in a few short years. His films haven’t done particularly
well at the box office and have generally been low profile affairs with
small budgets. Most of them have fallen into the horror genre which by
itself can stick a director in Hong Kong into a lower class strata (unlike
in Japan) where they have a long history of being B-films. Besides these
horror films (“Horror Hotline . . . Big Headed Monster”, “New Blood” and
“Diamond Hill” (which was sort of a social family drama with elements of
horror)), Cheang also directed the terrifically tense “Love Battlefield”
that should have been a hit, but wasn’t. Strangely, the one high profile
film that he directed is by far his worst, the banal “Death Curse” with
the Twins and one can only hope that he did this for the money. With
the exception of that film, Cheang has brought out really fine performances
from his actors – Carrie Ng in “Diamond Hill”, Josie Ho in “Horror Hotline”,
Niki Chow in “New Blood” and Niki again along with perhaps Eason’s Chan’s
finest performance in “Love Battlefield”. In this film, Cheang gets two
exhausting and emotionally riveting performances from his two lead actresses.
Even though the film sputters a bit in its final
third, this is Cheang’s most assured work. He generates equal measures
of tension and pathos that have your emotions and nerve endings doing somersaults.
The first hour of the film is a bone gnawing finger eating (pun intended)
rollercoaster ride of tension before it suddenly slows down dramatically
and shifts the mood into one of utter melancholy that feels like a curve
ball thrown at your head. Whether the film would have been more effective
had it stayed on its frantic pace to the end is hard to say – probably
commercially so – but the sudden switch in perspective and mood forces
the viewer to step back and see this as less of a horror film and more
as one of a personal and social tragedy. This film is also a welcome break
from the oodles of ghost films that have permeated Asian horror for years
now – yes Virginia a horror film can be made without a long haired female
ghost anywhere in sight. This one hones in like an acetylene torch on fears
much closer to home – just how vulnerable your child always is. Any mother
who sees this may be inclined to handcuff their child to themselves afterwards
and never let them go.
Ray (Alex Fong), his wife May (Hsu Chi) and their
small son Chi Lo (Tam Chun Ho) move into a spacious apartment in an affluent
high rise complex. Though left unspoken, one senses that there may be some
psychological baggage in their past and that May’s insular and fragile
emotional state may be the cause of it. Cheang doesn’t wait a minute before
he begins working the nervous agitation – while moving in the boy is tricked
into an elevator, the doors close and up he goes. In a panic, May searches
for him but before finally finding him she looks through the ventilator
grates – and sees an odd frightening creature rapidly climbing up the pipes.
A few days later May is coaxed into taking Chi Lo to a child’s birthday
party within the building and he suddenly vanishes. She frantically begins
looking for him but the stone faced neighbors don’t seem to care and only
want her to stop creating a panic because it may harm property values and
the police (Lam Suet) seem more annoyed than concerned with her hysterical
pleas to find her son (this anti-police sentiment also appears in “Love
Battlefield”). In an earlier conversation with her son he had asked her
“Mom would you abandon me” to which she answered “Of course not. Not even
if you abandon me”. And she doesn’t as she hunts relentlessly for her kidnapped
son.
But he is in the ventilator system – held by a
“monster” (an unrecognizable Karena Lam) who thinks that he is her son
and she is as intent on holding on to him as May is in getting him back
and the two desperately fight over him within the narrow shafts and on
the rooftop of the building. It is harrowing at times and brutal at times
and the two actresses give it all they have in what must have been a test
of physical endurance. Hsu Chi is terrific as a mother on the verge of
going insane with grief and frustration while under her mounds of makeup
and dirt Karena is able to capture your sympathies when her back story
is eventually revealed and near the end with only her eyes as they display
the enormous pent up pain and grief that she has lived through. It is a
killer. The film has its faults – mainly an overly long flashback devoted
to Karena’s character that stops the film dead in its tracks for a while
- and it feels as if possibly Cheang had to edit out some material for
time purposes as certain aspects of the film feel unexplained or unfinished
or not fully explored – but overall this one grabs you by the throat and
only barely lets you go.
Interestingly (or not), the DVD gives you an option
of two choices – one is a Horror version and the other a Drama version.
I watched the Horror version and then fast forwarded through the Drama
version but didn’t see any discernable differences. I may have missed them
or perhaps Cheang is trying to say that good real life horror is good drama
and that’s certainly the case here.
My rating for this film: 7.5