Director: Chao Wei-hao
Year: 2017
Country: Taiwan
Alternate Titles: Hong yi xiao nu hai 2
Genre: Ghosts
Plot:
Trying to find her missing daughter, a woman joins a rescue team when she's spotted being lead away by a mysterious figure in red heading into the local woods to find her and discovers a strange connection to a local legend involving the deadly figure forcing her to protect her daughter.
Review:
For the most part, this was a decent enough if still highly flawed sequel. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the localized build-up of the central storyline involving the mysterious girl ghost. With the stories they tell featuring the girl leading people away through hypnotism and other mind tricks, the need for the red cloak at all times and the general behavior she exhibits when capturing them, ranging from keeping them locked in cages unable to move or forcing them to eat hair or dirt, allows for the spirit here to have a great central feeling and helps to build a wholly chilling central character in the process.
As well, the ghostly action here is quite fun and manages to get some startling encounters. The opening encounter in the woods when it attacks a search-and-rescue team out of nowhere gets this off to a great start and a surprisingly shocking sequence at the home of a fellow mystic that may hold the keys to solving the mystery she faces has some great work here featuring the ghost emerging from odd places to attack and generates some tense moments. There’s also the rather fun scenes of the demon child running loose in the woods which invokes some rather creepy imagery of the supernatural beings performing their unearthly tricks. Seeing them turn into the demonic creatures and begin chasing them through the alternate dimensions battling the spirits of the unborn children. These here are what manage to hold this one up overall.
However, there are several problems with the film. The main issue at hand here is the wholly disjointed and chaotic storyline that makes little to no sense at all. The idea of exploring the legend of the ghost girl in red is to have an idea of the motivations and practice that goes into what they’re targeting and who’s at risk, yet this one seems to ramble on more about the history of the locals’ interactions with her rather than give out any kind of concrete example of what the ghost is accomplishing or after. Likewise, the idea of dragging the survivor from the first film into this unrelated film serves no use when she doesn’t do anything in a catatonic state for the majority of the film and doesn’t even serve the function of filling in the backstory work that she did in that one which would’ve been the perfect opportunity to have her there.
The film’s other big problem is a wholly overlong running time that doesn’t do this one any favors. There are so many beats in here that aren’t necessary at all, from a confusing side story involving a local tracker that acts like a tiger crawling on all fours or a series of encounters she has with the mystic woman who has her own tragic backstory that ties into what’s going on. These segments are simply excessive and force the film to run on far longer than it really should giving us storyline points that aren’t related to the film at all and causes the film to run through its ghosts scenes in truly perfunctory and expected manners to make up for the time lost to these situations. These are what really harm the film overall.
Overview: **.5/5
While there are some rather prominent and detrimental issues at play here, they're neither enough to completely lower the film or worthy of overthrowing the positives leaving this as a wholly middle-of-the-road effort. Really only give this a chance if you're a fan of the first one or a real aficionado for Asian supernatural genre films while those who aren't into either of those elements should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment