Afterimages

Maximum Extreme was invited to the gala premiere of Afterimages, a Singapore made horror flick featuring 5 short stories based on various local folktales and superstitions. Five of our lucky readers were also able to attend the premiere thanks to our awesome ticket giveaway.

The premise is that a bunch of friends burn paper effigies as offerings to the dead during the local Hungry Ghost festival. You can send the deceased pretty much anything by burning a paper version of the item, iPhone, house, TV, car.

The friends burn a paper camera but in a strange twist of fate, they get something back from the other side.

Each day after the students burn their offerings, they find a movie reel in the ashes. Invariably these curious cats decide to go ahead and watch whatever is on these movie reels. What they discover is 5 spooky tales that intertwine with their own fate.

Do they make it out alive or does curiosity kill these cats?? You'll have to watch to find out. This of course leads to the burning question, is this movie worth your money and time?

Well, it's a decent effort. The tales are pretty creepy and the movie plods along at a good pace leaving little time to get bored.

I quite liked the premise behind the various tales but while they may be creepy, they never actually become scary.

What I didn't like about the movie was the sub-standard special effects and more importantly, the poor acting that was frequently on display. To be honest, some of the acting really is terrible which makes me wonder how those actors ever got past the audition stages??

These poor performances really push the movie into comedy territory at times.

The best performance comes from veteran actor Vincent Tee whose chicken rice tale is probably one of the better short stories on offer. We were fortunate to have had the chance to chat with Vincent after the screening and he's clearly a really decent bloke.

Bottom line is that this movie will pass a couple of hours, you will be entertained, but it's ultimately very forgettable and if you're looking for a pre-Halloween scare then this is definitely not gonna do the job.

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Try comedy. The acting is terrible. Concept is boring. Filming is terrible. Dialogue is downright painful.

I didn't know that the 2014 Singaporean movie "Afterimages" was a horror anthology when I sat down to watch it, so that was a bit of a surprise for me. Not really a bad surprise, but usually anthologies are of very varied degrees of entertainment worth. As was also the case of "Afterimages".

First of all, I think it was a shame that they opted to shoot each individual segment in English, as this sort of served more of a distraction from the stories than it served to further the storylines. Why? Well, because it was odd English most of the times, laden with very thick accents, which were often hard to comprehend and understand.

The individual segments in "Afterimages" were, of course, of different entertainment value and worth, depending on what you enjoy in horror movie anthologies and what you enjoy watching in general.

"Ghost Pool Leg" was the first segment in "Afterimages", and while the storyline and concept of this segment was interesting, the execution of it on the screen came off as being more of a comedy than horror, given some very dubious special effects on the ghost.

Moving on to the second installment, "Xiao Bao Bao" was actually one of the more interesting segments in the anthology. But overall it wasn't a scary story, but it proved to be interesting and definitely felt like it was the most disturbing of the storylines.

The third segment, "Skin Deep", proved to be the most outrageous and far out there of the segments. It was perhaps the one that appealed to me the least, given the absurdity of the storyline. It was nicely acted though, but the story was just stupid.

And finally the fourth segment "Rekindling" was actually the most appealing and best of storylines, though it came off as being somewhat comical. It was because of the questionable special effects that the haunt in this segment was more of a funny one than a scary one.

The narrative story that tied the four segments together was adequate, although the ending was a bit bland. And again, it was weighed down by questionable special effects.

For a horror anthology, I must admit that "Afterimages" wasn't really bringing much of anything new to the horror genre. And for a seasoned horror veteran as myself, this was a mere stroll in the park. Sure, it was watchable, but it was hardly a memorable experience, nor an anthology that I will be watching again.

All in all, "Afterimages" wasn't all that impressive. It had some interesting enough aspects to it, but they were ultimately not utilized to the full potential. It was a less than mediocre foray into the horror world. And if you are familiar with Asian horror tropes and themes, then there are far, far better choices readily available on the Asian movie market.

My rating of "Afterimages" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

Something about the description of the film drew me into it, as I wondered if this would go the route of some extremely surreal wild stuff coming out of the films from the fire. instead it went another way, and I was fine with it, showing us the films and making the "main story" into the framing device into which all the short films are tied together.

some of the younger actors, particularly in the main story, just can't act, but they put up a fight that makes it hilarious to watch. In fact, a whole lot of the film turns out to be funny, in part due to some of the events in the short film, in other parts due to the absolutely deadpan serious delivery of some truly awful lines, such as a doctor in one story declaring that a victim looked like they were literally frightened to death.

as well, the kids in the main story generated lots of hysteria from me in how their discovery of the films and the generating of new films leads to a major conflict, all centered around copyright and intellectual property. Namely; are these supernatural films somehow covered under some manner of copyright law or can they edit them all together and sell it as their own anthology of films.

overall it was a fun experience. I had fun.

Some people gave this low marks... I can't see why. The posh English accents are common in Asia, they are well spoken. Accept that and you'll enjoy the movie. One said the acting was bad, only the first "clip" as it was supposed to be a short film by students! I guess they didn't see the rest of the film and the professionally made "clips" that followed. It's enjoyable, average, but for young people who've not seen many horror movies they will like it.