Mon seung

"Diary" ("Mon Seung") initially had my hopes up for being something particularly interesting, as it is a Pang brothers movie. But I suppose I had my expectations up a little bit too high. The movie didn't deliver to the extend I had hoped.

That being said, I am not saying that "Diary" is a bad or boring movie, not at all. It just wasn't what I had expected from the story summary I had read.

The story is about a lonely and somewhat delusional woman named Winnie (played by Charlene Choi) who spends her time making marionette puppets and writing in her diary. She misses her boyfriend Seth a lot and keeps calling him and leaving him messages. Seth doesn't return these calls though, and she decides to meet him at his work place. There she runs into Ray, who bears a strong resemblance to Seth, and they start a relationship.

Initially, then the story wasn't all that strong or powerful. There were aspects to it that seemed not really properly thought through or planned well. And as such, the movie had a tendency to become jumpy and a little bit incoherent at times.

The DVD claims 'packed with mind-bending twists and turns, this riveting psychological thriller from the creators of The Eye is packed with eye-popping special effects and will keep you guessing until the final, shocking ending!'. Alright, did we watch the same movie here? Perhaps whomever wrote that had a special edition of the movie that I hadn't, because I couldn't really put that label on the movie.

It was nice to see Charlene Choi in a movie such as this, and have her move away from those sugar-coated love romantic comedies that she usually works with. And she managed to step out into a darker universe with grace, because she really performed well in this movie.

For an Asian horror movie, then "Diary" was a fairly mediocre result, and there are far better horror movies on the Asian movie market if you want to be properly scared. And definitely not one of the Pang brother's best movies.