Re-Cycle

The Pang Brothers book marked a creatively grim, if disconnected little supernatural horror film balancing that of a novelist (a perfectly pitched performance by Angelica Lee) trying to write a horror novel, but finding out what she writes is personally happening to her. Being haunted by her work with the growing expectations, or a former if complicated love coming back on the scene. She enters a dream reality (where the title comes in to play), mixing the stark horror and fleeting happiness in what is a journey of discovery… up until its undermining ending. I was actually liking the (traditional, but stimulating) build-up (consisting of eerie sounds, lurking figures and a sense of danger) until she enters this fantasy world (like a nightmarish spin of 'Alice's in Wonderland'), where the story felt more like clips (well that's how memories kept hidden, waiting to be remembered simply come and then go) and being cluttered with crazy CGI… which wasn't badly projected, as some sequences were amazing, but eventually I grew tired of the routine. The Pang Brothers' surefooted handling is slick, letting the flowing cinematography craft out haunting frames and wonderfully strange imagery. Inspired, but emotionally starved and the story really loses momentum.

I blame no one but myself for not loving this movie the first time around, as Re-Cycle is the posterchild for viewer-induced disappointment. For me personally, I expected something that mirrored the Silent Hill videogames – and considering how those Californian simpletons mucked up their attempt at a Silent Hill movie, I was drooling at the mouth to see if Re-Cycle succeeded where they had failed.

Obviously, I deluded myself into believing that Re-Cycle was trying to be something it was never meant to be. Needless to say, I was severely disappointed after an initial viewing. Where were all of the incredibly disturbing, blood-soaked images? Where were the detailed puzzles? Where were the violent death scenes? They were nowhere – and I was angry that Re-Cycle turned out to be its own movie with its own themes. Go figure.

Months later I started to think of the movie more and more. I thought to myself, "Yeah, that movie was mediocre, but that one scene was really cool." Then I pondered, "Wow, that other scene was sweet too, and that other one was awesome." Eventually, I decided to give it another go. That "other go" happened last night, and I ended up watching one heck of a movie.

The fantasy elements kick in at around the 40-minute mark, but Re-Cycle doesn't stoop to boring you during the opening segments with superfluous exposition. From minute one it grabs you with some well-executed (albeit conventional) horror elements that become much less conventional during a second viewing when you identify references to the main theme of the film.

Once the fantasy elements hit, Re-Cycle becomes a non-stop fantasy adventure. I cannot remember a horror film in recent memory with such relentless pacing. Much of this is owed to its fragmented transport of the lead protagonists. They may escape one danger by going through a door, but on the other side of that door is a completely different environment that is no less perilous. Some have criticized Re-Cycle for being scattershot and unfocused, but I would respectfully disagree considering how almost every single horror element references back to the overarching theme of the film. It's no masterpiece, but it works quite well – especially when you identify the references upon a second viewing.

I truly feel sorry for Hollywood fanboys. East Asian cinema already mops the floor with Western cinema in terms of scriptwriting, cinematography, hand-to-hand action sequences, sound, youthful acting talent, and sheer originality (just to name a few). Now, they've given us a fantasy film that mops the floor with the excessively bloated, overrated, self-indulgent twaddle known as Lord of the Rings.

Take the ending to Re-Cycle as an example. The finale within the Transit realm is quite simply the most intense, incredible fantasy sequence I've ever seen. I must admit that I've rewatched that scene about 30 times over the past few days. I'm totally, unequivocally ADDICTED to it. It's so much better than any scene in LOTR.

Better yet, I didn't have to slug through a bunch of generic characters speaking painfully generic dialogue while walking very, very slowly within vast landscapes for 600 friggin minutes like LOTR. Nor did I have to sit through half a dozen superfluous, drawn-out endings stacked one on top of the other. That might be the formula for winning Oscars and attracting moviegoers who like their fantasy films as vanilla as humanly possible, but I personally like my fantasy films with some – oh, I don't know – emotion. In a nutshell, Re-Cycle elicited some excitement (especially near the end), whereas LOTR stagnated in a realm of perpetual boredom.

On a side note, I can't really understand why Oxide Pang is so relentlessly criticized (to the point of unreasonableness) by so many people. It's exceedingly ironic that the people who complain about his scripts are the very same people who shout "masterpiece" when referring to those Japanese horror flicks from the 1960s (which will remain nameless) that have some of the worst scriptwriting in the history of horror cinema. In addition, Oxide's use of camera and sound is exceptional, and probably second only to Ryuhei Kitamura or Christopher Doyle.

Nothing this guy does is ever good enough for anyone, even though his movies are better than 90% of everyone else's. Diary, The Detective, Abnormal Beauty, Re-Cycle, The Eye, and Revenge (from the Bangkok Haunted anthology) combine to form the most impressive recent horror/thriller portfolio outside of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Compare Oxide Pang to any American horror director and guy becomes an instant legend.

I saw this one on Fantasporto 2007, in Porto, Portugal.

I went to watch this one without expecting anything in particular from it. I like to go into films like this, quits the preconceptions brought by the excess of knowledge about the people involved. Apparently, i know it now, the directors are part of a new generation in the Hong Kong cinema, and they've produced some hits on that basis. To me they were unknown.

The film is complex, but not always for good reasons. It starts with a very smooth environment, borrowed (i guess, but not necessarily) from the psychological "apartment" thrillers by Polansky. This beginning was thrilling and promising, very good moments. The main character played a writer, i was guessing some kind of game with this characteristic (contemporary good cinema loves to explore these things). But no, what we watch are successive radical cuts between sceneries, story, etc. It moves on to present some fantastic scenery, having something to do with Japanese animé, a kind of Miyazaki filmed with live sets instead of animated ones.

But it fails deeply in trying to produce intense drama environment, in order to pass the environmental global message; instead we get a non pretended comedic portion of film (at a certain time laughs were the most heard sounds in the room).

The thing is, to my view, it gathers too many ways of doing it, to many cinematic theories, in a trick of associating the proliferation of materials and waste with the proliferation of cinematic "moods" and so cause the breathless sensation in the line of the intended message. I guess some contention and simplicity would apply perfectly in this case.

Story is completely irrelevant (not necessarily bad), but it is tiring and without motivation trying to follow it or understand it. Nevertheless this is a film with good production values, not always completely believable, but overall solid.

Some imagery is impressive, and well worked out in the relation with the soundtrack (also not bad), but i don't consider it enough to justify the time it lasts. Unless you ave a very special interest for this kind of movie, i don't recommend it.

My evaluation: 2/5

Tsui Ting-Yin is a best-selling author and for her new book she decides to change genre and instead of writing love stories focus on the supernatural.When writing a chapter for her new book,entitled Re-Cycle,the supernatural she writes about appears to her in real life in the form of a woman.Afraid at first,Tsui Ting-Yin later follows the long-haired woman that appeared to her in order to be able to write more and is soon plunged into a world of fantasy and horror."Re-Cycle" plays more like a fantasy flick than horror.The film certainly looks truly beautiful and features some jaw-dropping scenery,unfortunately it lacks scares and is simply dull at times.Unlike their previous films,the building of nail-biting tension and creepy suspense did not play as big a part in "Re-Cycle".Overall,I expected more from the makers of "The Eye" and "Ab-normal Beauty".A solid 6 out of 10.

This movie has a writer who has some trouble in her life at the particular moment the movie starts. An old love has resurfaced and she is having difficulty with her next novel. She is seemingly being haunted by a figure she wrote about, but then tossed away then she is somehow pulled into another realm. The movie does start off a bit slowly as there is a bit of set up with a few scares here and there like the typical Asian horror movie. Then when she gets to the other realm the movie is suddenly totally cool as it is so like watching a Silent Hill movie instead. I mean these strange ghosts start chasing our heroine and they move just like the ghosts in Silent Hill 4, she encounters a cliff like in any of the Silent Hill games and she enters an area that looks like the industrialized zone in part 4. Then she runs into an old man and the movie slams on the breaks and you get a few more great visual scenes, but the movie never has the energy it did when the heroine first enters this strange realm. There are still a couple of good visuals such as the mysterious creepy hanging people and the bridge and well. However, there are a few to many scenes that seem to need a push as it takes a while for them to get going and there are a lot of talking scenes and the final confrontation is very anti climatic. Then the ending comes and they throw a twist on top of the rather predictable twist and movie over. All I could think is what could have been if we had more scenes like that where she first arrived rather than say the scene with the flowers and neglected dead people which had no energy and rather light music. This movie also seems to want to be original, but it does not even come close. Other than Silent Hill there is also bits of The Neverending Story, Wizard of Oz, Spirited Away, and a host of other movies. I guess the makers of this film wanted to recycle a lot of other ideas where they might have been better off using just one or two.