Where Got Ghost? (2009) User Reviews

Jack Neo Spoofs Supernatural Beliefs

[changmoh · 6/10 · 27 August 2009]

SINGAPORE'S funnyman Jack Neo is back with a spoof on local beliefs of the supernatural in this three-in-one offering, "Where Got Ghost?". This time around, he shares the directorial duties with sitcom writer Boris Boo. The three short stories, which are apparently the answers to the title's question, are: 'Roadside Got Ghost', 'Forest Got Ghost' and 'House Got Ghost'.

Despite the presence of Boo, this one is typical Jack Neo stuff - each with a moral at the end. There is also an awesome CGI-enhanced scene that helps to close the movie with a bang. I mention 'awesome' in relation to low-budget Asian standards, not Hollywood-type wizardry, of course.

The first segment, 'Roadside Got Ghost', deals with three swindlers who start a four-digit (4D) telephone gambling scam and charge the winners 20 per cent of their takings. Things get out of hand when they encounter competition and a vengeful wandering spirit.

'Forest Got Ghost' is about two army reservists (John Cheng and Wang Lei) who take an illegal short-cut during jungle training - and end up in a nightmarish setting.

The third, 'House Got Ghost', is set during the lunar seventh month when hungry ghosts are supposed to roam the world of the living. Three siblings (played by 'usual suspects' Jack Neo, Mark Lee and Henry Thia) find themselves being 'visited' by their late mother's spirit and start blaming her for their financial woes. However, they learn the true meaning of ancestral blessing when they embark on a road trip and...

Don't expect to be scared by these ghost stories. They are meant to be funny rather than scary. The first two segments appear like comedy sketches, especially Forest Got Ghost which features Tay Yin Yin as the strange woman that the hapless duo encounter in the Singapore jungle. This is where screenwriter Neo resorts to infantile gags and toilet jokes to keep the comedy going.

Richard Low and Marcus Chin stand out in the 'Roadside' segment, giving their roles a tongue-in-cheek treatment that helps to set the jovial mood for the show.

Of the three, the best is House Got Ghost, which is performed by Neo's regulars, Lee and Thia, in roles they are so familiar with. In fact the episode looks like an extension of last year's "Money No Enough 2" in which veteran actress Lai Ming also played the mother. It is fitting that Neo and Boo end the movie with this one as the moral lesson will linger with the viewers as they leave the cinema. It is not one of Neo's best but still watchable. - By LIM CHANG MOH (limchangmoh.blogspot.com)

Where Got Good? Not here.

[xamtaro · 3/10 · 25 December 2009]

This film is Singaporean filmmaker Jack Neo's first attempt at the horror comedy genre. It is actually an anthology of three short cautionary tales that spoofs a number of Singaporean superstitious beliefs. In typical Jack Neo style, the jokes are lame, and the entire show is more stupid than funny.

The first segment is "Roadside Got Ghost" where we follow a trio of con men who take advantage of the locals' superstitious beliefs to swindle them. Their next big scheme involves making random calls to people under the guise of a "god of fortune" promising them a lucky number that would win a cash prize at the next "4D" lottery draw. Though the scam initially works, Things take a turn for the worse when the trio start receiving mysterious calls from a ghost that they angered. The second segment is "Forest Got Ghost" where we follow two soldiers who took an ill-advised through the woods and stumbled across a mysterious house and its lone female occupant during a rain storm. The last segment is "House Got Ghost" which involves three brothers being haunted by the spirit of their dearly departed mother. They attempt to appease and then get rid of the ghost only to discover that their mother's spirit has a different agenda for their fates.

As a "horror comedy", this movie fails big time in both areas. It is neither scary nor is it funny. The only reason anyone would be laughing would be at how stupid the three stories are and at the idiotic cast of characters, each one sillier than the next. Sure there are a number of in-jokes and cheap laughs, mostly delivered in Chinese dialect but that is all they are: cheap, superficial giggle inducers with nothing really witty to set it apart from an amateur's home-videoed sitcom. Honestly, Better comedy can be found in high school stage plays.

Another reason why people would be laughing in the aisles would be at how terrible this movie looks. The cheesy make-up on the ghosts make them look more like clowns than ghastly apparitions. Also, the movie is plagued by some of the most laziest camera-work and effects ever seen in cinema. Discovery channel documentaries have more energetic camera-work than this.

A good amount of CGI is used but once again, they are laughably bad. Among the CGI shots are a horrendously edited digital car crash, a cartoony looking haunted forest and the worst looking green-screened avalanche in film making history. If this is the standard that could be achieved by Singaporean CGI artists, the future is indeed bleak for them.

Though sub-standard in its execution, this movie scores for being able to convey some good moral values at the end of each segment. The actors all turn in good performances but sometimes tend to over-act and ham it up. As a whole however, "Where got Ghost" would only scare the most timid of creatures and entertain only those Singaporean heart-landers unfortunate enough to not have anything better to watch.

With near zero international appeal thanks to the many jokes and humor that only a local would understand, "Where got Ghost" is a disappointing entry into the long list of "hit and miss" Singaporean movies. A poorly filmed waste-of-time about stupid characters in silly situations. Then again, people like to laugh at stupidity.

David Footballfield

[tedg · 27 January 2010]

Western viewers will find this dull. I did. I am supposing that there are enough colloquial hooks to make it engaging for its target audience. It certainly seems to be narrowly focused on Chinese Singaporeans.

If you do not know this, it is three short films by the same fellow, a local humorist. The "where got ghost?" theme is distributed in three places: Roadside, Forest and Home. Each is played for comedy.

You might like this, as I did, as an exercise in going further to enter the film's world than the filmmaker provided for. He very clearly assumed that you would of course resonate to the cultural jokes. It is assumed that you will naturally understand the local superstitions of this one (of four) culture in this tiny nation. They are quite unreachable, which makes them all the more alluring. They all have to do with manipulated fate.

It is easy to go even deeper though and try to get behind the specific structure of the thing. This is not composed structure we are talking about here, at least I think not. But it is there. All three set up the world so that there is no such thing as luck. There are three places to stand: in the movie itself as hapless nitwits. As the viewer, a position clearly reified. And in the position of the ghosts, who here are all-powerful but still conforming to a (rather illogical) code.

The people in the story aren't quite people: There is much made of the 4D lottery, and you get the feeling that these people are no more than lottery numbers. The structure comes from how the power of the viewer as a sort of ghost is woven into and sort of competes with the powers of the on-screen ghosts. In the last segment, we even see the ghost on TeeVee! In the middle segment, there is a sort of middle existence, where characters transition from humans to half-ghosts. It is strange, unfamiliar, and a bit titillating.

There are two effective cinematic moments, at the end of the two earlier segments. The spell in the first segment it triggered by the theft of some oranges. As our dummy lays dying in the road, we see hundreds of oranges roll toward him as we have an overhead shot.

The second effect is the result of an elaborate setup, involving trees, a house, magic that is real magic pretending to be fake, and a sudden transition. It is really quite breathtaking visually and forms the spine of the viewer-ghost structure.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.