Metacritic-Rezensionen

So here it is, an arena rock type film event for lovers of Asian cinema. Good news is that you won’t have that annoying ringing in your ears the day after. Better news is that you’ll have food for thought way after witnessing these spectacles.

What all three of these stories share is the quality found in Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King: An attention to horror as it emerges from everyday life as transformed by fear, fantasy and depravity.

A black-blooded hoot.

Plenty of vile little secrets and ghastly urges are explored in the stylishly made Asian-fusion horror triptych.

Few directors are as "extreme" as Miike, but ironically, his entry in Three... Extremes is the least explicit; its suggestive tale of envy and guilt resembles Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" more than Miike's usual six-per-year gorefests.

Connoisseurs of horror are bound to play favorites here (this amateur votes for Box), but there's one more thing that connects these three films--the brilliant cinematography of Christopher Doyle.

A bloody strange movie--and a surprise. Who would have thought that you could put together an anthology of "extreme" Asian horror featurettes by three cutting-edge Asian directors where the most tasteful, restrained contribution was the one by Japanese mad dog moviemaker Takashi Miike?

The result falls somewhere between psychodrama and horror. Cult cinema fans should come away satisfied, though the stories are probably too brutal to reach much into the mainstream.

Title notwithstanding, Three . . . Extremes really offers only two.

Another pulpy Creepshow movie would be more welcome than a second installment of this stiff stuff.