I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

FOREIGN HORROR THAT'S CONFUSING AS HELL






Hak Yae (Black Night) (2006) Hong Kong

I'm starting to scare myself a little bit. Not with movies, but my head - it's starting to 'reject' them. What I mean is, I watch 'em, I write 'em down but lately I then promptly forget them. Usually I can watch several and take my notes and get them on my blog in a couple of days. I just tried this yesterday and today and realized that although I had watched this pair of movies and taken my usual notes I had absolutely no idea what the hell the movies were about. That was Hidden 3D (no loss really) and this one. And this was a good one too. Very confusing, but pretty good.

This is a trilogy of three horror shorts in three different countries with no wrap-around story to connect them. That's okay because they are confusing enough by themselves. For some reason, they all have to do with water, which makes me wonder why they didn't call it Black Water or something, because not one of the stories had anything to do with a black night. But then again, even with some explanation (and I really paid close attention, I promise) I couldn't tell you exactly what it was precisely about. But I'll try because then you won't have to.

Next Door (Hong Kong): For some reason China has a whole month for a ghost festival when you're not supposed to be out at night. What a drag. Jane comes back from a trip and looks for her boyfriend Joe - he's knocking on her neighbor Hosie's door but won't explain why. She keeps seeing a small boy who rolls a marble over to her, but then disappears. Puddles of water keep appearing on her floor and a red eyed woman sneaks up on her then disappears. She doesn't know why. 

Long story short, Joe had been having an affair with Hosie (a lot of chutzpah to sleep with two women who live next to each other). He was playing around with her and, being a cop, playfully puts her in handcuffs but then goes out for condoms (eww) and says he'll be right back - but that's when he ran into Jane. Hosie has the key but drops it. She then remembers she left the tub running (of course) and tried to turn it off with her hands behind her back - duh. She trips on a marble (WTH is with the kid and the marble?) and pulls down the shower curtain and falls into the water and drowns. 

Now this is how they end it so don't yell at me. Jane discovers Hosie's body as Joe discovers them both. To save Jane from the vengeful ghost of Hosie Joe shoots himself. Jane loves him so she handcuffs herself to him (Hosie put them on him) and they both plunge out of the window, splatting on the ground below. But Hosie promised (Ghosts make promises?) that Jane would live so sproing! Jane sits up and smiles. As Hosie. Jane then (as Hosie) proceeds to continue her life and take her place as a model in New York. Spooky. That was sarcasm by the way.

Dark Hole (Japan): Yuki suffers from nightmares. One day, she notices a boy in a yellow outfit appears at her job in an aquarium where before it was only in her dreams. When she approaches him he disappears but dammit, there's that puddle again. What the hell is with puddles of water in the East? Her finance' Satoshi suggests she go to see a psychiatrist. She finally remembers she has a pet who only she can see who lives in water. Ah geez. 

Her doctor tries to convince her she has Dissociative Personality Disorder (I've already said how rare that actually is.) She is herself, and she is her pet, a pet who kills when she gets mad. Duh. But she visits the site her pet lives in and her doctor follows. He is then eaten (rather, sucked out from the inside, actually a pretty neat effect to have the eyeballs explode inward) by her Cthulu type monster. Her fiancee' shows up and tells her she's nuts, she killed the doctor. What she do, eat the eyeballs? He keeps yelling at her - mistake. Gulp. He's gone.

The Lost Memory (Thailand): Prang is a single mother who lives with her young son. She's having a tough time after an accident took away a chunk of her memories. She's bothered by a man who seems to shadow her and her son Sun (sorry, that's his name). She's trying to remember what she's lost as hard as she can but it's really slow (so is this story). She finally remembers she had a best friend. This friend had a boyfriend named Wit. When they broke up, Prang started dating him, and married him and had a son. 

But he went back to her best friend. She gathers up her stuff and her son and drives off. That's all she can remember. Finally she remembers she had a huge fight with her ex-best friend and tries to find her, only to find out (although she knew because, say it with me now, the ghost of her friend soaking wet and LEAVING A DAMN PUDDLE showed up at her house) that she died the day before. She goes home and realizes it's Wit who's been following her around. 

Once home she starts remembering more. Like the accident that caused her amnesia. Her son was not belted in the car and had died - she's been dragging around a ghost all this time. Sigh. He's pissed 'cause she said she'd never leave him and she did so... of course she has to die, right? The father rushes in and pleads with his son not to take her away but he slips on a bar of soap (swear to God) and hits his head on the toilet. She rushes off in his car and... do you really need to know the rest? Bratty little kids alive or dead always get their way I guess. 

The end scene is the happy family at a mental hospital. Wit is rolling his wife around in a wheelchair while Sun walks beside them - of course in reality it's the now insane Wit rolling around an empty chair.