Zhai bian

I thought that the Asian film called The Heirloom was a good supernatural horror film. An architect called James Yang returns from the UK with his girlfriend called Yo, to inspect an old mansion that he has inherited on the outskirts of Taipei, they move into their new home. but then strange things start to happen. Yo's journalist goes missing and the James's friend Cheng gets strangled in a bathtub. they soon find out that the house may have strange or murderous powers. To find out the truth about the house, James and his girlfriend Yo start to begin to investigate the history of James's family and uncover a tale of mass suicide.

My motivation for this comment is the only, very negative review, that says exactly the opposite of what I found in this movie! The overall rating is terrible (though 11 votes is not representative of anything), and the film definitely deserves more.

To me, it has a good story, for once. It avoids Asiatic horror movie clichés and creates a mood of its own. It is superbly photographed. Under a seemingly classic form and approach lie lots of elements that makes this movie much more special than you'd expect it to be in the first 10 minutes.

It's well worth a try. To be perfectly honest, I saw it in a festival, and one develops a certain tendency to see the good things in the four to six movies you watch every day, so I can't rule out that I might react otherwise if I saw it today.

Still, I am confident this is more than just another Asian horror-flick, and that, if you're curious and open-minded, you'll find something to feed your movie-hungry appetite...

"The Heirloom" tells the story of a young architect James Yang who inherits an old family house in Taipei.He moves in and bring his long time girlfriend Yo along.James quickly starts having bad dreams connected to long buried memories form his childhood.It seems that the house hides a dark secret,in which thirty years prior the entire family attended bizarre rituals an ended up committing suicide all at the same time.Each relative hung on a rope to die.Taiwanese horror flick "The Heirloom" is not as good as it's reputed to be.The visuals are certainly impressive,but the script is quite weak.The total lack of scariness is seriously disappointing.Overall,"The Heirloom" is a rather mediocre horror film from Taiwan that left me unsatisfied.My generous rating:7 out of 10.

The architect James Yang (Jason Chang) returns to Taiwan after living for twenty years in England since he has inherited a family home. He learns that the old seventy year-old house has been empty for twenty years. James invites his girlfriend Yo (Terri Kwan), who is a dancer, to move in together with him to the house. Their friends Yi-Chen (Yu-chen Chang) and Cheng mysteriously appear in the house with no memory of how they arrived there. Soon Cheng is found dead in his bathtub and a snoopy detective suspects of Yi-Chen. He decides to stay in the house, but strange events happen also to him. Yi-Chen decides to investigate the only relative alive in the Yang family and goes to an asylum to interview James' Aunt Sue Yang. She learns a dark secret about the Yang family. Will she find who is haunting the house?

"The Heirloom" is a creepy and dark Taiwanese horror movie with a story based on a Chinese legend of dead children ghosts fed with blood and raised to bring fortune to the family. This legend is totally unknown to Westerns and maybe this might be the reason why this film is underrated in IMDb. However, the screenplay is well-written; the direction of Leste Chen is effective, supported by good performances of the gorgeous Terri Kwan and Jason Chang and beautiful cinematography. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray and DVD

This movie had a decent buildup the first fifteen minutes. Everything following is for the worse. The story itself is pretty simple. The way it was told however was very confusing. Also the main actors haven't got a clue what to do with the material. At the climax this becomes clear when the lead actress acts surprised when she is told something. Completely forgetting that she already discovered this several scenes ago. Confusion is one thing but lack of suspense is not something that can be overlooked in a movie like this. Therefore "Heirloom" could be conceived as a drama with some supernatural elements. Only without any sympathy for the characters on screen or real emotions shown it does make it difficult to be touched. It did bother me though that apart from 1 or 2 scenes they didn't show much that could be considered supernatural. The movie doesn't show anything that would make sense of what is going on. It is like scenes were cut that otherwise would provide better transitions between scenes. The viewer just has to accept it without questioning anything. But even then it is hard liking this movie when essentially not much is going on. In short,don't waste your time with this one.