Afterimages (2014) User Reviews

Good Tie Ins

[shawnblackman · 5/10 · 6 November 2016]

This was a cool horror flick that takes place during the Hungry Ghost Festival were you place money or an item (usually a picture on paper or fake hell money) as an offering to the deceased, in a bowl, then burnt to be used in the afterlife. Some film students discover one bowl produces films from the ashes the next morning, every time they burn a camera or a facsimile of one. Each time it is in a different format and each time the film is more horrific than the last.

I thought this was a unique way of slapping together an anthology film and having it all link together for a film within a film. Kudos to the writers. The effects are awesome in this as well. I was surprised that the acting wasn't cheesy. If you get a chance watch this one. All the stories were entertaining.

characters were not really developed properly to give the audience an impact.

[tiffanyyongwt · 6/10 · 30 November 2014]

First of all, many thanks to Mythopolis for the premiere invite and the success of the event. I guess this is the first movie where I have so many friends acting in it. It was not easy for me, albeit interesting to be reviewing a film where I know so many of the actors.

Ghost Pool Leg (鬼拉脚) This is a very common practice in Singapore – not to swim at night, and especially so during the lunar seventh month. This is the most perfect story of the five. Richard Wylie (Robert Warnock) a character who challenged the lunar seventh month myth by swimming at night, is the perfect example for most parents to show their children and warn them against the swimming at night. The swimming scene done by the midnight swimmers were taken beautifully, so beautiful that it was easily to scare the audience as we would forget to brace ourselves for the scare. Veteran actor Laurence Pang took the role of the security guard, left me an impression with his last scene

Xiao Bao Bao (小宝宝) Xiao Bao Bao is a "logical" story where the witness of a suicide might get nightmares and trauma. Aside from the unnecessary scene where Amy break off with her boyfriend, the whole story was pretty smooth and well-taken. I like the part where the camera (Go-Pro?) was placed on the rotating fan to build the suspense. There were two things which me and my friend highlighted after watching the film: Why did the "ghost" scare Amy with the bloodied face if she wanted Amy to do her favour (this reminded me of the Ghost Whisperer), while I don't understand why she continued staying at home after being scared by the spirits. Won't it be our first instinct to get out of the house?

Skin Deep I was once scared by a CCTV clip which went viral on Facebook, thus when the story started with the CCTV video, I was actually scared. But things go a bit awry later on. Skin Deep focused on a mysterious woman Yasmin (Adeline Pang) who hide a secret, despite the great acting from her (as well as the lift passengers Harrison (Mike Kasem), Helen (Susan Tordoff) and Henry (Daniel Jenkins)), the way the story of the bomoh needles was brought into the picture was a tad too forced. Telling secrets so dark that most will bring to their deathbeds to strangers is just so weird, not to say how it took an asthmatic girl with an overly aggressive friend to get the story going. I was disappointed how it had no direct link to the CCTV (and wondered where the mobile video Romesh (Sylvester Pillay) secretly took went).

Kudos to the scene where Yasmin had to cut her own face to dig out the golden needle (but I was wondering where the blood went ). I really like Adeline Pang's acting, but I wonder if the two stories will be any different if she had exchanged her role with Melissa Yeo to become Amy Tan in Xiao Bao Bao, as Adeline will most probably be able to bring out that role well and Melissa (somehow) fit the role of "beautiful + mysterious" lady more.

Rekindling Rekindling is, by far, the story with the best cast. Veteran actor Vincent Tee played the role of guilty and sad Hok Leng to a T. The strong contrast of sullen Hok Leng (Vincent Tee) and cheerful yet sarcastic Lee Seng (Gim Goh) made the popular murder story enjoyable. With his slight Singaporean accent, Lee Seng (Gim Goh) is most probably many people's favourite character in Afterimages (Yes, including me!). Together with the China wife "Anna Mei" (Julie Ng), both of them provided the audience with some comic relief from all the sudden scaring and ghostly images. I was hoping the ghost will be acted by the same person, but I guess it will be more funny than scary if it's "Anna Mei" acting

Burnt Offerings The five students Derrick (Jeremy Meyer), Tess Ling (Caren Utino), Deuce (Kevin Lagrange), Cameron (Olivia Stiefel) and Rylee (Michael Kwah) aka aspiring film makers were the characters used to frame and link the various stories together. I overheard some audience commenting how the film could easily do away with the characters and it would be nicer without the redundant final story. I had to admit that I was a little disappointed with the characters' emotional transition. There were choppy parts here and there, with one of the girls behaving weirdly (possessed?) in the middle of the film, and suddenly finding some stuff in the house they were staying in and suddenly informing the rest normally. The fearless and almost brainless dabble with supernatural beings made me wonder if they were really aspiring film makers. I believe every film maker should have the common decency to show respect to the unknown.

The 5 characters were not really developed properly to give the audience an impact. There was a part where one of the five suddenly went missing, and I was like, erm, how did he look like again? Similarly, for the two girls Tess Ling and Cameron, they look somewhat similar with different hairstyles. The filler scenes in between stories become repetitive after a while. I guess what spoiled the final story was the poorly done "fire" and "breaking of the doors".

Shooting style Despite the nit-picking, I like how the director used various shooting angles and styles for each story, portraying each story (as well as the Singapore cityscape) in a different light....

Read on: http://tiffanyyong.com/2014/09/10/afterimages-horror-movie-review/

Will Singapore made horror movie Afterimages leave you with with positive or negative afterthoughts??? Read our review to find out!!!

[bobbystryker · 5/10 · 17 September 2014]

Maximum Extreme was invited to the gala premiere of Afterimages, a Singapore made horror flick featuring 5 short stories based on various local folktales and superstitions. Five of our lucky readers were also able to attend the premiere thanks to our awesome ticket giveaway.

The premise is that a bunch of friends burn paper effigies as offerings to the dead during the local Hungry Ghost festival. You can send the deceased pretty much anything by burning a paper version of the item, iPhone, house, TV, car.

The friends burn a paper camera but in a strange twist of fate, they get something back from the other side.

Each day after the students burn their offerings, they find a movie reel in the ashes. Invariably these curious cats decide to go ahead and watch whatever is on these movie reels. What they discover is 5 spooky tales that intertwine with their own fate.

Do they make it out alive or does curiosity kill these cats?? You'll have to watch to find out. This of course leads to the burning question, is this movie worth your money and time?

Well, it's a decent effort. The tales are pretty creepy and the movie plods along at a good pace leaving little time to get bored.

I quite liked the premise behind the various tales but while they may be creepy, they never actually become scary.

What I didn't like about the movie was the sub-standard special effects and more importantly, the poor acting that was frequently on display. To be honest, some of the acting really is terrible which makes me wonder how those actors ever got past the audition stages??

These poor performances really push the movie into comedy territory at times.

The best performance comes from veteran actor Vincent Tee whose chicken rice tale is probably one of the better short stories on offer. We were fortunate to have had the chance to chat with Vincent after the screening and he's clearly a really decent bloke.

Bottom line is that this movie will pass a couple of hours, you will be entertained, but it's ultimately very forgettable and if you're looking for a pre-Halloween scare then this is definitely not gonna do the job.

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Painful.

[ottoej24 · 1/10 · 14 December 2018]

I'm pretty tolerant of lower budget films, but this was awful to watch. Embarrassing. Visually it's tolerable, but it is abysmal on every other aspect. It reeks of student film project. There is an endless list of things you could rant about, but it just isn't worth it. Walk around this landmine and move on.

Unique and very good

[jbrbsmom · 7/10 · 5 October 2017]

If you are looking for something a little different, this is a well done Malaysian movie. Main characters offer something to the spirits and surprisingly get something back...that is the general plot summed up but it is far deeper than that and exceptionally well done. They offer a camera and get a creepy movie in return.

Not "scary" if you are looking for something that is full of heart pounding edge of your seat moments, but there are a few here and it is generally "creepy" and conceptually and psychologically it is quite a good thriller.

Generally a good pace and you are kept going through the whole movie with many good twist and turns right up until the end.

The acting is pretty good and the plot is good and it is something that I have not seen before and I watch a LOT of horror. I put this on the top of the genre and really enjoyed it and highly recommend it to people looking for something enjoyable to watch.

Horrible NOT Horror

[jfost75 · 2/10 · 30 August 2020]

I dont ever maintain higg hopes for anything found in AP's "Free" list, even still this one was a stinker. A group of Asian kids decide to burn cameras in a fiee pit, which results in video footage appearing of different horror shorts. Very much like s poor man's Creepshow, minus the originality or decent acting. The stories were lame and tried to be thoughtful but instead came off as just bad. The acting was garbage and one actresses accent was so bad, ber entire dialogue was basically unintelligible gibberish. If you skip this movie entirely, your life can only be better for it.

funny stuff

[phenomynouss · 7/10 · 14 October 2018]

Something about the description of the film drew me into it, as I wondered if this would go the route of some extremely surreal wild stuff coming out of the films from the fire. instead it went another way, and I was fine with it, showing us the films and making the "main story" into the framing device into which all the short films are tied together.

some of the younger actors, particularly in the main story, just can't act, but they put up a fight that makes it hilarious to watch. In fact, a whole lot of the film turns out to be funny, in part due to some of the events in the short film, in other parts due to the absolutely deadpan serious delivery of some truly awful lines, such as a doctor in one story declaring that a victim looked like they were literally frightened to death.

as well, the kids in the main story generated lots of hysteria from me in how their discovery of the films and the generating of new films leads to a major conflict, all centered around copyright and intellectual property. Namely; are these supernatural films somehow covered under some manner of copyright law or can they edit them all together and sell it as their own anthology of films.

overall it was a fun experience. I had fun.

Horror?

[inkysquid-29951 · 1/10 · 19 May 2019]

Try comedy. The acting is terrible. Concept is boring. Filming is terrible. Dialogue is downright painful.

Not terrible. Don't watch if you don't like Asian ghost stories.

[sicklittlebunny · 6/10 · 21 April 2023]

The film wasn't great, but it wasn't awful either. It's a collection of ghost stories with some, low budget, filler to link them together, I'm not really sure what other people were expecting from an anthology from an unheard-of production company, but this fulfills the brief.

I actually rather enjoyed the film, the idea of making offerings to the dead and the dead making their own offerings in return, was quite novel. And the stories the dead sent were pretty good.

I really like Asian mythology, so the short stories were exactly my kind of thing, but the stories rarely have a moral or a nice neat ending, which I know annoys a lot of westerners. If you don't like that type of story, don't watch the film. Even the characters question the lack of point or moral to the tales.

If you like Geodam or Junji Ito Maniac, then you'll probably appreciate this film, but if you don't like the "s**t happens" approach to story telling, this will be frustrating. There's no explanation for most of the things that happen in the stories and most of them are completely open to interpretation. Which is what I find interesting about them.

Pretentious NONSENSE ~ a very severe FAIL 1/10

[FountainPen · 1/10 · 3 March 2018]

This attempt at making a motion picture is rubbish, fails on all points. For one thing , I couldn't always understand what the "actors" were saying because their accents in English are atrocious (and no subtitles on my DVD). Stay away from this garbage unless you want to torture yourself with meaningless drawn-out scenes and ridiculous scripting, The 1 out of 10 is my maximum. This is an INFURIATING film. I waited for something significant, but it never did, and there was zero resolution at the end. RUN AWAY from this flick !

Letters from the dead

[nogodnomasters · 8/10 · 24 January 2018]

A group of film students in Singapore need to make a film. They discover if they burn a camera in a particular pit, a film will be there the following day. The film is a ghost story of some kind and admittedly it was better than the kids could make, so just go with it. They burn more cameras as this becomes an anthology with their own story tying it all together.

The short stories were interesting, most with a twist. I thought the lady finger tale was too long. Asian style Creepshow. Soft 4 stars.

Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

Just another mainstream horror anthology...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 27 December 2020]

I didn't know that the 2014 Singaporean movie "Afterimages" was a horror anthology when I sat down to watch it, so that was a bit of a surprise for me. Not really a bad surprise, but usually anthologies are of very varied degrees of entertainment worth. As was also the case of "Afterimages".

First of all, I think it was a shame that they opted to shoot each individual segment in English, as this sort of served more of a distraction from the stories than it served to further the storylines. Why? Well, because it was odd English most of the times, laden with very thick accents, which were often hard to comprehend and understand.

The individual segments in "Afterimages" were, of course, of different entertainment value and worth, depending on what you enjoy in horror movie anthologies and what you enjoy watching in general.

"Ghost Pool Leg" was the first segment in "Afterimages", and while the storyline and concept of this segment was interesting, the execution of it on the screen came off as being more of a comedy than horror, given some very dubious special effects on the ghost.

Moving on to the second installment, "Xiao Bao Bao" was actually one of the more interesting segments in the anthology. But overall it wasn't a scary story, but it proved to be interesting and definitely felt like it was the most disturbing of the storylines.

The third segment, "Skin Deep", proved to be the most outrageous and far out there of the segments. It was perhaps the one that appealed to me the least, given the absurdity of the storyline. It was nicely acted though, but the story was just stupid.

And finally the fourth segment "Rekindling" was actually the most appealing and best of storylines, though it came off as being somewhat comical. It was because of the questionable special effects that the haunt in this segment was more of a funny one than a scary one.

The narrative story that tied the four segments together was adequate, although the ending was a bit bland. And again, it was weighed down by questionable special effects.

For a horror anthology, I must admit that "Afterimages" wasn't really bringing much of anything new to the horror genre. And for a seasoned horror veteran as myself, this was a mere stroll in the park. Sure, it was watchable, but it was hardly a memorable experience, nor an anthology that I will be watching again.

All in all, "Afterimages" wasn't all that impressive. It had some interesting enough aspects to it, but they were ultimately not utilized to the full potential. It was a less than mediocre foray into the horror world. And if you are familiar with Asian horror tropes and themes, then there are far, far better choices readily available on the Asian movie market.

My rating of "Afterimages" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

Great Asian horror...

[dgallaher-11265 · 9/10 · 6 November 2018]

Great Asian horror film. Asian horror stories are much less graphic than American. But in my opinion just as good or in some cases better. They concentrate more on stories than special effects. If you can enjoy the story driven films, I believe you will enjoy this one.

Enjoyable movie especially for horror newbies

[ebookgamer · 8/10 · 24 August 2020]

Some people gave this low marks... I can't see why. The posh English accents are common in Asia, they are well spoken. Accept that and you'll enjoy the movie. One said the acting was bad, only the first "clip" as it was supposed to be a short film by students! I guess they didn't see the rest of the film and the professionally made "clips" that followed. It's enjoyable, average, but for young people who've not seen many horror movies they will like it.