Tales from the Dark 1 (2013) User Reviews

The second story kind of saved the film with Kelly Chen's (surprising) comedic act in contrast to Tony Leung's somewhat-serious character.

[tiffanyyongwt · 6/10 · 14 August 2013]

I would say, I respect Simon Yam's for his great acting, being a low- income and poorly educated odd-job worker, suffering from the rising rents and prices, he portrayed the character very well. I will blame it on the odd and boring story plot, with random appearance of an obese ghost who keeps eating but says that he is full, two little girls locked out of their house and a fierce looking old lady. It made me wonder why am I in the cinema watching this disconnected film which made little sense. I guess the only funny part was the police man fainting when he saw the squashed body from a car accident.

The second story kind of saved the film with Kelly Chen's (surprising) comedic act in contrast to Tony Leung's somewhat-serious character. The complete opposites shared great chemistry and I was surprised Kelly Chen isn't just a vase or victim of the story. Some might feel that it is more of a funny ghost film than a scary one, but I was scared right at the start but Kelly Chen herself. The story ended nicely with Leung and his family when his son revealed a secret his mother would hate to know. This is a story that is bound to leave you grinning.

The third story was not my favourite, but it is good enough to get me thinking and interested in the Chinese culture of villain-hitting (打小 人). It is a folk sorcery popular in the Guangdong area of China and Hong Kong. Its purpose is to curse one's enemies using magic. Villain hitting has been preliminarily included in the list of 'Intangible Cultural Heritage' by Hong Kong Home Affairs' Bureau.

For full review: http://tiffanyyong.com/2013/07/17/tales-from-the-dark- 1-movie-review/

A long haul movie, falling short on a few vital ingredients

[videorama-759-859391 · 6/10 · 12 August 2013]

In this review I'm including part 2 as well. As a gore hound to this so called Asian horror fest, I was let down for quite a while as there's much more humor, instead of slashings, decapitations, what have you, to these six small tales of the bizarre, that constitute a movie of over three hours running time. I didn't find it that much scary as I thought. As with Evil Dead, to a smaller extent, again my expectations were held too high as I thought it would be full bore. There are a couple of moments where you'll jump thanks to the dark and deafening nasty music score, that preludes that moment of surprise or shock. The nasty score at the start gave the impression this was to be a really scary sick flick, but it really disappointed me on that number as did the gore. The most sickening gore scene is the one in the last shorter tale involving a prostitute who gets her just desserts. Although Tales in The Dark is very smart and invented story wise, no denying that, what we've got in between is a lot of drone time, flatness, the story telling cuts too deep, weighing the film down, until the next shock, although the humor, compensates for quite a bit of it. But for the reasons stated earlier, I was just expecting a more scary vehicle. One asset was story 2, which starred Tony Leung, one of the best Asian actors of this generation, if not the best. And what would a multiple horror tale film be, without one including revenge. Not without interest, just some of you, you expectations will fall short.

Aside from a bumpy start by Simon Yam, this first-parter of a duology boasts a surprisingly entertaining entry by Lee Chi-Ngai and an unexpectedly compelling one by Fruit Chan

[moviexclusive · 16 July 2013]

'Tales From the Dark: Part 1' sees a veritable roster of Hong Kong actors join forces with some of the most talented filmmakers from the territory to breathe life into the dormant horror genre. Meant as the first instalment of a duology based on acclaimed Chinese writer Lilian Lee's stories, its star-studded cast includes Simon Yam, Tony Leung, Kelly Chen and Susan Siu, with the likes of Yam (making his directorial debut), Lee Chi-Ngai and Fruit Chan behind the camera.

That pedigree alone is enough to get one excited over this high-concept anthology from Edko Films' Bill Kong and Movie Addict's Matthew Tang, which aims to bring back the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s where horror was a thriving genre of the Hong Kong filmmaking industry. Indeed, it's been a while since there has been an authentic Hong Kong horror (the last we can remember is Wong Jing's 'Hong Kong Ghost Stories' last year) and even longer since there's been a decent addition, so you'll understand why expectations are high.

Thankfully, despite a bumpy start, this first instalment of a duology does not disappoint, with two of the three shorts hitting their respective marks. It's perhaps befitting that we begin with the unfortunate worst of the lot, Yam's 'Stolen Goods'. Casting himself in the lead role, Yam plays a down-and-out odd-job worker Kwan who turns to stealing urns and blackmailing their relatives for ransom in a desperate bid to make ends meet. Needless to say, it doesn't go well for Kwan, who soon finds himself face to face with one of the dead.

The problem with Yam's short is twofold. First, Lilian Lee's own script spends too much time setting up Kwan's sorry predicament - in addition to his unemployment, Kwan lives in a "coffin-sized" apartment where the only people he interacts with are a pair of inanimate rag dolls - and too little time making sense of the random ghostly images he sees, such as an obese ghost (Lam Suet) who cannot stop eating and two little girls locked out of their house. Second, Yam resorts too much to shrill noises and jump scares to elicit some reaction from his audience, such that it's hard not to judge his attempt at building atmosphere as cheap.

It's a good thing that it only goes on for a little more than a half hour, with Chi-Ngai's 'A Word in the Palm' taking over to enliven the proceedings. Instead of a straightforward horror, Chi-Ngai (who both adapts and directs) injects delightful moments of levity into the story of a reluctant palmist who teams up with a New Age spiritualist to investigate a married couple's claim of being stalked by a ghost. The plotting isn't particularly ingenious, but what makes this entry the most entertaining of the triptych are Tony Leung and Kelly Chen's warm and eccentric performances.

As the jaded palmist who can see ghosts but wishes not to and the hippy spiritualist who can't see ghosts but eagerly wants to encounter one, Leung and Chen are amusing opposites who share great chemistry with each other. Nicely intertwined into the odd-couple's investigation is Leung's character's own family troubles, his wife taking a vehement objection to his (literally) otherworldly business that he has agreed to set aside in order to spend more time with his son. Less scary than laugh-out-loud amusing, it ends hilariously on a high note that is bound to leave you with a wide grin.

Surprisingly, it gets even better with Fruit Chan's 'Jing Zhe'. Written and directed by the acclaimed independent director, it centres on the traditional practice of 'villain hitting' (or known as '打小人' in Chinese) that is basically a means of cursing those who have wronged you. Susan Siu plays one such hitter, who gets her own comeuppance when she is approached by the ghost of a teenage girl (Dada Chen) to beat four individuals - three men and one woman to be exact - whose identities only become clearer later on.

Chan cleverly plays with the expectations of his audience, using a well- heeled middle-aged woman's visit in the first half to exact revenge on his son's wife and mistress to establish the practice and serve as precursor to the tragic conclusion. His narrative sleight-of-hand pays off dramatically with an emotional finish that makes this not only the most memorable among the shorts, but also the one that ties in most meaningfully with the moral at the end of each short. And as with his outstanding 'Dumplings' in Peter Chan's 2004 anthology 'Three Extremes', Chan puts his documentarian style to good use, striking an authentic note that suits the story perfectly.

By the time this anthology comes to a meditative close, you'll probably have forgotten the somewhat questionable beginning it had with Yam's 'Stolen Goods'. Two out of three ain't bad at all, especially considering how enjoyable Chi-Ngai's 'A Word in the Palm' and how compelling Chan's 'Jing Zhe' are. That still makes it on the whole a mighty fine addition to the Hong Kong horror genre, with the buck now on Gordon Chan, Lawrence Lau and Teddy Robin to complete this as a one-two perfect finish.

An abysmal horror anthology from the seedy sides of Hong Kong...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 12 June 2018]

I must that I was quite thrilled when I got the chance to sit down and watch "Tales from the Dark 1" (aka "Mai lei yeh").

Why, you ask?

Well, there were two main reasons for this. The first being that this is a Hong Kong horror anthology; which combines two of my favorite things - the horror genre and the Hong Kong Cinema. And the second reason being that they had some really big and established names on the cast list.

It dawned on me not even half way through the first of the three segments that make up "Tales from the Dark 1" that I would be in for an about an hour and a half of pure abysmal storytelling.

The first segment, titled "Stolen Goods", was about a man down on his luck and forced to steal the urns of the dead and demand a ransom for their return. But of course the spirits did not take lightly to his folly. Right, well this story just made no sense and it was mostly just an abundance of trying to pull some jump scares. Which failed.

The second segment, titled "A Word in the Palm" was even worse that then first segment. The storyline here was absolutely horrible. And I must admit that I lost interest in it quite quickly and found myself with my mobile phone in my hand instead of paying 100% attention to the garbage on the screen. I know that it was about a fortune teller and his wife and they were looking into a murder or something. Yeah, I paid that little interest to this segment.

The third and last segment, titled "Jing Zhe" was actually the most interesting of the three segments. But that is saying very little, because it still wasn't particularly outstanding or entertaining. It was about a woman on the street beating photos for people, a local Hong Kong tradition that makes very little sense.

All in all, this anthology was not worth the time, effort or the money.

It should be said that they had some rather impressive talents to act in the movie, which includes Simon Yam, Kelly Chen, Suet Lam and Tony Ka Fai Leung. And anyone even just overly familiar with Hong Kong cinema should know one or all of these people. But even with such established performers on the cast list, little was done to lift the movie, as not even they could save this train wreck of an anthology.

I was so discouraged by this anthology that I have little to no interest in watching "Tales from the Dark 2".