Director: Peter Chan, Kim Jee-woon, Nonzee Nimibutr
Year: 2002
Country: Hong Kong/South Korea/Thailand
Alternate Titles: Sam gang
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Three more stories told by emerging Asian directors.
Review:
Memories-Awaking from a car accident, a woman with no memory tries to piece the puzzles of her identity back together while her husband seeks to find the reason for her strange disappearance. As more and more clues come together, they gradually realize the strange rationale for both situations. Frankly, the only thing really enjoyable here is the finale twist which manages to come off quite nicely and has a lot of great scares present here because of that. The main problem is the fact that these are so late into the segment that the rest of it being taken up with the strange mystery is just excruciating to get through. The low-key pace and drama-like feel of the situations don't help matters as barely anything happens beyond their friends questioning each other while she runs around trying to find the cause of her condition. None of this is really engrossing material nor built for generating scares, and as a whole, this one is pretty weak.
The Wheel-In a small Thai village, a theater troupe reenacting famous folklore tales finds a cursed puppet washed along their shore. When everyone who comes into contact with it suddenly experiences grave encounters, a local boy tries to find a way to end the curse. Overall this one was quite enjoyable with there being a lot to like here. The main part of this one is the fact that the atmosphere created with the puppets is pretty chilling, as their mannequin-like looks and highly-elaborate decorations make them gorgeous to look at with a sinister air beneath the facade, and that creates a really lasting impression here. That the backstory about the rival clans and curses brought along makes for quite a fun time here with this one really getting a chance to play that up with the different situations encountered throughout here, from ghostly executioners and general pains around the body to supernatural fires and possession that becomes quite creepy along the way. While this one does get a little confusing with all the slow-motion shots that tend to go on forever distorting the dialog to make it pretty tough to figure out what's going on in the later half, the atmosphere and pacing are more than enough to hold this up.
Going Home-Moving into an apartment complex, a man and his son try to get along with a reclusive neighbor who keeps his comatose wife in their apartment. When the son goes missing and the search leads him to the apartment, he finds a far more sinister reason behind the wife's condition. This one really could've been great and was certainly full of positive points here with the engrossing mystery and strange behavior setting up a really chilling set-piece later on when he comes barging in looking for his son, and that's when this one turns south by having the kidnapper really be more compassionate and caring rather than a sadistic captor which makes the rationale for holding him all the weirder. None of these scenes really drive up the horror atmosphere all that much by keeping this one so low-key and drama-based that it really doesn't offer many thrills here. That's also in keeping with the final half where the backstory is finally revealed which steers this one even further away from horror into a dark romance effort that doesn't do much to keep this one all that scary. It's a real missed opportunity.
Overview: ***/5
Enjoyable but still flawed Anthology effort that has some decent stories present, this one has some slight drawbacks which are more than enough to make this one worthwhile at points. Viewers who enjoy this kind of genre fare, are huge anthology completists, or fans of the creative crew will be the main audience here while most others out there might want to heed caution here.
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