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October 28, 2005

NEW HONG KONG HORROR FROM SHU QI

Homesweethomejpg_webWithout any fanfare, what could be one of this year's better movies opens in Hong Kong this weekend: HOME SWEET HOME. Starring Shu Qi, Karena Lam, Alex Fong and Lam Suet the movie follows a happy family who moves into a housing estate and has their little boy abducted by a monster who lives in the building. Karena Lam plays the "monster".

I used to live in a housing estate in Hong Kong and they are creepy places at night: everyone goes to bed early and you're left in this LOGAN'S RUN graveyard surrounded by enormous monuments to institutional architecture. What gives me hope for this movie is that it's directed by Soi Cheang whose DIAMOND HILL, LOVE BATTLEFIELD, HORROR HOTLINE...BIG HEAD MONSTER and NEW BLOOD all broke new ground for Hong Kong horror. All these movies had flaws (except for DIAMOND HILL and LOVE BATTLEFIELD) but they were all attempts to carve out new ground where horror comes from character, not from long-haired, wet chicks who loiter just over your shoulder staring at you.

Click on the poster to the right for a larger view, and you can see a trailer here (courtesy of MonkeyPeaches).

October 28, 2005 at 10:17 AM in News | Permalink

Comments

Oh ... this is Koma 2 ... Shu Qi's making a bit of a career of replacing Angelica Lee in unnecessary sequels ...

Posted by: Todd | Oct 28, 2005 4:04:26 PM

I appreciate you need to be controversial, but LOVE BATTLEFIELD lost any reason to exist after the 'highway blizzard' scene.

Posted by: Steve | Oct 28, 2005 5:35:22 PM

I didn't see KOMA, but HOME SWEET HOME seems to be about two mothers fighting over the same kid - one mother is Shu Qi and the other is a dirty, cruddy, sweaty and nasty Karena Lam.

And I liked LOVE BATTLEFIELD a lot. The final scene with all the different lovers by the dock was, I thought, pretty gripping. All these people doing lousy things for perfectly good reasons made me feel nice and sick - a feeling I love to get from a movie. Occasionally the movie suffered from a need to get to the next plot point, but I thought it was really well-made and worthwhile.

And as for the "lost any reason to exist after the 'highway blizzard' scene" oh, naive one: its reason to exist is to make money.

Posted by: Grady Hendrix | Oct 30, 2005 11:14:17 AM

I just realized that this is being billed as KOMA 2. Huh? Can anyone explain the connection?

Posted by: Grady Hendrix | Nov 2, 2005 1:31:09 PM

i think the little boy is really cute...wat is his name??

Posted by: donna | Aug 9, 2006 4:03:40 PM

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