Saturday, May 2, 2009

Re-Cycle

This is one of those really awesome Thai flicks. Thailand is putting out better and better work! I mean, their horror/dark fantasy movies have always seemed to make more sense to westerners than any of the other Asian...places...movies. Okay, so I hope you know what I mean. So I just watched Re-Cycle.

Re-Cycle is one of those movies that belong to the newly-named 'metafiction' genre, where the story is about the author, the author is a character, or the story revolves around the author's story, or story-in-a-story type things.

It's about an author, Ting-yin, who is celebrating the movie premiere of her bestsellings romance novels by stressing out over her latest book, a venture into the supernatural. She says, at the press conference for the movie, "I want to experience the supernatural."

An old boyfriend comes back into town, and she's extremely bitter about it. We don't know why just yet. About this time, the cinematography and special effects start to happen. Awesome, just lemme say. The movie is beautifully shot. The special effects and art design are absolutely amazing. I am scouring the internet for stills from this movie, it looks that awesome.

The first part of the movie, when Ting-yin begins to have her paranormal experiences, is great. The jump scenes are perfectly placed. One of them even got a "HOLY FRIG!!" out of me, which is pretty rare these days.

So as Ting-yin begins to put two and two together-- what she writes is what she needs to do-- she starts to, well, do what she writes. This means getting into the elevator of her apartment building. She notices right off the posh, expensive buildings has changed.

From here on, I was mesmerized. This movie honestly has some of the best graphics I have ever seen. The special effects were handled with such care that I wasn't turned off by a single corny trick. And did I mention it's asbolutely beautiful? The surreal aspect of this movie rocks. It's a bizarre mix of Neverending Story, Silent Hill 4, Alice in Wonderland, Labyrinth, Pan's Labyrinth What Dreams May Come and a few other films.

The description has this listed as a horror film. although it has some kick-butt jump scenes, some really disturbing imagery, and the requisite long-haired faceless Asian ghost (whose later special effects completely redeem this doesn't-quite-belong-in-this-film-character), it's definitely more of a dark fantasy than a horror movie. There is some content that may affect hormonal, sensitive people (like myself. I cried a couple of times. But I have a documented medical screwed-up-hormone condition LOL, so results not typical).

The only thing that made this movie slightly not perfect is the very last two minutes. I'm sure it's because something was lost in the translation, and it is sort of explained in the movie, but not fully, and just a little bit more would have straightened out the confusion.

Still, it's not enough to keep me from watching this movie again! As I said, it's absolutely BEAUTIFUL.

No comments: