When I sat down to watch the 2016 Vietnamese horror comedy "Benh Vien Ma" (aka "Ghost Hospital"), I had never actually heard about the movie. And not being overly familiar with Vietnamese cinema, then I didn't really know what to expect here.
But I figured a horror comedy titled "Ghost Hospital" could be worthwhile watching. And I do like the Asian cinema quite a lot, so of course I opted to watch director Vo Thanh Hoa's 2016 movie.
"Benh Vien Ma" runs for 104 minutes, I managed to endure 57 of those minutes. Then I just simply gave up on the ordeal. The storyline fell short, very short, of entertaining me. Nothing particularly interesting happened in the 57 minutes that I suffered through, neither in horror or comedy genre. Sure, there were attempts at venturing into the horror genre and sprucing it up with comedy elements, but it just didn't come off as being funny, nor particularly enjoyable.
And the fact that the character gallery in the movie was about as interesting as a handful of sawdust, then there really wasn't much to work on here. The storyline was weak and terrible, and the character gallery was somewhat annoying actually.
This is not a movie that I would recommend you to sit down and watch if you enjoy Asian horror comedies. There are far better movies out there. Nor is it a movie that I will ever return to attempt finish watching. Why? Well, because the movie just failed to captivate me.
My rating of "Benh Vien Ma" lands on a three out of ten stars, and that is mostly based on the production value of the movie alone.
