SILK GETS PANNED (BUT THAT'S OKAY)

Derek Elley writing for Variety pans SILK, the Taiwanese horror movie from director Su Chao-pin. He claims that it "...doesn't have one decent scare in two hours..." and that it "...gradually runs out of steam after the first 40 minutes." I've actually been looking forward to this one since I've liked Su Chao-pin's past work (he wrote DOUBLE VISION) and I have to offer reservations I have about Elley's review or at least about his points of reference.

Elley writes:

"Pic suffers from all of the same problems that afflicted earlier Taiwanese psycho-thriller, "Double Vision" (2002), which Su scripted: fuzzy writing, lack of on-screen chemistry between usually reliable thesps, and no real imagination beyond the f/x."

Then he says:

"Though made on a fraction of the "Silk" budget, there's more creepiness and invention per foot of film in last year's Taiwanese spookfest "The Heirloom."

So now I feel better. While it had its problems, I enjoyed DOUBLE VISION quite a bit. I thought Tony Leung Kar-fai was good in it, and I thought David Morse was exceptionally good. The movie was really well-written and the scene that shocked me was the temple massacre, which didn't involve much in the way of special effects. Also, besides some nice camerawork and a creepy-looking repeating shot of a mass suicide, I found THE HEIRLOOM worthless. It's another "young kids solve old mystery to keep ghost from hurting them." There's nothing really wrong with it if you like repetition, but I was so bored while watching it that my eyebrows started to hurt.