Cham bin hung leng (2002)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Wai-Man Cheng

Writer:

Simon Lui (writer)

Release Date:

7 April 2002 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Horror

Cast

Jordan Chan	...	David
Kelly Lin	...	Cindy
Man Chi Chan
Simon Lui		(as Simon Lui Yu-Yeung)
Tat-Ming Cheung
Goon Chung Wong

Also Known As:

Sleeping with the Dead (Europe: English title) (Hong Kong: English title)

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese

Color:

Color

Ghost, yes; eyeballs, no

A set of variations on recent ghost films, especially 'Stir of Echoes,' with many scary moments, objects, and locales, attractively and suggestively shot, but also too many eyeballs (one was too many for me) and one-half to three-quarters too many plots. There are also confusions, not helped by the garbled English of the subtitles (e.g. the characters keep telling each other to 'check the bill,' meaning to pay it). We find out who's a ghost halfway through, yet are evidently meant to be surprised when we find out again later; the story turns on the main character's discovery that his wife is cheating on him, and she doesn't deny it, but her feelings at the end seem to contradict it. The avenging spirit changes form through the movie, at one point even sporting 'Ring' hair (as Asian Cult Cinema dubbed it); the first incarnation, with the white masklike face, is the best. The movie is a jumble but, all in all, pretty effective.