Troublesome Night (1997) User Reviews

Several short stories loosely tied together

[vonboise · 6/10 · 28 October 2001]

The beginning of the Troublesome Night series. A mildly entertaining movie with several stories entwined. Not serious enough to give one goose bumps, but worth a watch on a slow night.

First story involves a group of campers who tented on the beach near a cemetery. The victim seemed to choose the nude swimmer emerging from water over those he was camping with. Good choice. Christy Chung is a wife headed to an anniversary dinner in the second story. Her husband, a real estate agent, is attempting to take a client to view a house. A couple more stories follow making this an interesting and fun movie to watch. May not be the best from the series, but it started everything off.

The beginning of an era of original ghost movies between horror and humour

[kluseba · 7/10 · 17 August 2012]

Troublesome Night is the first part out of nineteen Hongkong movies created between 1997 and 2003 featuring loosely bound episodes about encounters between humans and ghosts. Many of these movies include cameo appearances of famous Hongkong actors as well as of promising acting talents. The films vary from quite humorous moments to scaring passages. The biggest thrill is that one never knows what to expect. Sometimes, an episode starts quite childish and predictable and suddenly turns out to be very intense and scary. In other moments, the settings for an episode are atmospheric and dark but rather turn out to touch a more dramatic, philosophical or romantic genre. Sometimes, the ghosts are wise and try to help humans, sometimes they fall in love with them and sometimes they just want to torture the livings.

This first part of the enjoyable series is neither among the greatest nor among the worst Troublesome night features. All three episodes are well directed and atmospheric enough to convince. The acting is solid but not always outstanding and so are the stories. Let's take a brief look on the four episodes featured in here.

The first one starts rather childish and is centered around some male friends that want to celebrate an anniversary at a lake next to an old cemetery. One of the young men suddenly sees a beautiful naked woman that happens to be a ghost but nobody believes him. The teenagers then meet a group of girls that are camping on a beach and they start getting closer. As they try to play a stupid game on the nearby cemetery by ignoring several warnings, the forces of evil suddenly strike and one can't tell what is imagination or reality anymore until a stunning ending.

The second episode happens on the streets of Hongkong when the young men and women of the first episode are on their way back home. A young man and his female lover are on the road on a dark rainy night to sell a house to an old lady. The deal though happens to be a failure and the secret lovers get into a serious argument. Meanwhile, the wife of the cheating husband is preparing the couple's marriage anniversary. Then, several accidents occur on the nocturnal streets of the city and one is not sure anymore who of the characters is among the living and who has died in one of the accidents until the truth is revealed.

The third episodes goes back to some of the characters that met on that tragic night on the beach featured in the first episode. A young man and a young woman have become more than just friends and are starting a romantic relationship even if they are still shocked about the deadly events they have all been through together. After a while, the young woman starts to act strangely. Her boyfriend comes to the conclusion that she is cheating on him and starts to investigate with one of his friends and with the help of a strange exorcist who briefly appears in all four episodes and who is some sort of story teller. Soon, the trio realizes that the secret lover of the naive girl is nothing but a normal lover.

The fourth and last episode features some of the young men and women on their walk to the local movie theatres to watch the premiere of a movie. The arrogant main actor and his superficial girlfriend are also there. Despite several warnings, the couple sits on some reserved places and attracts the anger of those who should have sit down on these seats. The cinema quickly becomes a prison and madness strikes both characters that can't escape from their fate.

In the end, each episode had its gripping moments. Personally, I preferred the first episode which had several changes of pace and surprises until the very end. The episode I liked the least was the second one because it takes quite some time to actually kick off. All four episodes are though diverting enough to easily get through this flick and make you want to watch the sequels, too. Any fan of diversified and vivid horror cinema that doesn't take it self too serious at some points, should definitely check the series out. I would also recommend this flick to those that generally adore well done Hongkong cinema. Anybody who's expecting an entirely funny horror parody or a bleak and gripping slasher film might though rather dislike the film because of its variety.

Not what i expected but it okay

[phanthinga · 6/10 · 6 December 2017]

Troublesome Night is the first installment in the long running horror anthology with the same name that arguably not the best but it simple and well made enough to give it a go if you want to explore the horror cinema from Hong Kong.There are four stories that tied with each other make it feel like a whole universe.The characters is funny especially Simon Lui as the host when he the reason why the movie so enjoyable

Start of a popular Hong Kong series of spooky stories

[ralphrepo_01 · 17 August 2007]

This was the first entry for a popular Hong Kong series of mildly spooky stories, similar and compared to the "Mr. Vampire" HK movies, or the US television series, "Tales Of The Crypt" (1989). Where it departs from the US series however, is through persistent use of certain actors and actresses in it's loosely related stories. The various titles that IMDb seems to have related to this, "Yam Yeung Lo, Yin Yang Lu, Aau Yeung Liu" et cetera, are all exactly the same thing in Chinese; describing the "Road Between Living & Dead." The different pronunciations were probably a result of various dialectic differences in phonetics. The first few entries had several tales within a movie, while the later entries were single stories that were movie length. The VCDs sold generally have dual Mandarin & Cantonese tracks, along with both Chinese (Traditional) and Semi-English subtitles.

The entire franchise is held together by a web of byzantine Chinese beliefs, suppositions about the supernatural and general Asian superstitions; and the results should one violate long standing "rules" pertaining to Chinese spiritualism, ancestral worship, and the occult.

This first installment of the franchise consisted of four different vignettes; (#1) a bunch of teens on a late night beach outing, (#2) wife of a cheating husband on their wedding anniversary, (#3) a young girl is seduced by a ghost, and (#4) a HK movie star at the premiere of his latest film in a haunted theatre. As a series start, this entry certainly doesn't set off any fireworks, but is fair in it's presentation of the myriad of beliefs of the Chinese supernatural. 5/10 rating.

A rather mundane start off a long-spanning movie franchise...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 5 July 2020]

Oddly enough I've only come to learn of the "Troublesome Night" horror comedy anthology franchise in 2020. Especially since the first once was released in 1997, and the franchise spans over a staggering 19 movies. That is just insane. And even more odd is it because I love horror movies and I am a big fan of the Hong Kong cinema.

This 1997 horror anthology known as "Troublesome Night" (aka "Yam yeung lo") wasn't really all that impressive. Sure, it was watchable and semi-entertaining, but it wasn't a particularly outstanding moment in the Hong Kong horror cinema, nor was it a particularly memorable movie experience.

This first entry in the franchise, does have some nice enough names on the cast list, with the likes of Louis Koo, Teresa Mak and Lan Law.

It should be said that the individual segments were nicely tied together, but the overall impression of the storyline and script was just less than mediocre for me. It was fairly weak for a horror anthology, with it having more emphasis on the comedy than on the horror aspects.

I managed to sit through the entire anthology - the first movie, not all 19 of them - but I weren't more than semi-entertained. I am rating "Troublesome Night" a four out of ten stars.

One of many

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 9 August 2021]

Imagine my surprise as I started putting together anthology week to learn that there weren't just a few Yam Yueng Lo or Troublesome Night movies. From 1997 to 2003, they made 19 of these movies and a 20th edition to celebrate the 20th anniversary in 2017.

The streets of Hong Kong are haunted, as we learn from four loosely connected stories in this film. It starts when several young people decide to camp outside a cemetery, which is never a good idea when you really think about it. One of them, Ken (Louis Koo, who was in the Hong Kong remake of Cellular that was entitled Connected), meets a mysterious woman (Law Len, the spider demon from the Journey to the West movies) who changes his life in a supernatural way.

His friends return to the city without him as Mrs. To (Christy Chung, who was born in Montreal and ended up in Hong Kong where she won the Miss Chinese International Pageant without being able to speak the language before becoming an actress in movies like The Bride with White Hair 2) waits in vain for her husband (Sunny Chan, Hold You Tight) to arrive for their anniversary.

This leads to a ghost story where Jojo (Teresa Mak, who is also in the eleventh and seventeenth movies in this series) falls in love with a spectral entity. This segment might not be frightening, yet it is steamy and nearly approaches art. That said, I've never seen someone have passionate sex with a ghost as blood streams down the walls all over their Mission: Impossible poster.

Finally, we catch up with the survivors joining Peter Butt (Simon Lui, who was in nearly every one of these movies) for a movie, but the restless ghosts in the theater go all Demons and trap everyone in a 60s world of endless hallways.

While a few of these stories were directed by Victor Tam Long-Cheong and Steve Cheng, The Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome director Herman Yau seems like the real force behind this. They made one or two of these movies every year, so some of the humor may be dated - and localized for Hong Kong, but when has that stopped us from enjoying their films - yet this movie is plenty of fun.

A chilling and entertaining beginning to the Troublesome Night trilogy.

[OllieSuave-007 · 9/10 · 7 April 2016]

This is first film in Hong Kong's Troublesome Night movie series, a collection of films whose stories are based on the supernatural and features hair-raising ghosts. As the first and original Troublesome Night movie, this film is a anthology of stories that provided a unique take on horror, humor and dialog. The acting was great and the plot was well-paced.

In the first story, a group of friends go on a camping trip, where one of the campers, Ken (Louis Koo), encounters a mysterious woman (Lan Law) near a grave. It's a simple yet ghostly story that gives the film a good start.

The second story involves Mrs. To's (Christy Chung) date with her husband (Sunny Chan) to celebrate their wedding anniversary, but he never shows up. It's a tragic yet bone-chilling tale that would make you look over your shoulder twice.

The third story involves Jojo (Teresa Mak) being seduced by a ghost, which is the most sensual and, in my opinion, less scary of all the stories. Still, it was nicely done.

The final story involves Peter Butt (Simon Lui) visiting a theater with friends, but their enjoyment of the movie was cut short by restless ghosts and phantoms who haunt the building. From the zombie-looking audience members to May (Christine Ng) and Ng Tai-Hung's (Frankie Ng) run through endless corridors, this story is what I think the freakiest and intriguing of them all. Brilliantly done and very entertaining; my favorite scene was Hung discovering his movie ticket stub was date stamped in the 1960s in the present date of 1997!

Overall, this film is a chilling and entertaining beginning to the Troublesome Night trilogy.

Grade A