Wang shang guai tan

Best described as a trio of scary tales, this Chinese release from the late nineties showcases some of the worst moments of cinema to ever come from the Far East. We follow a struggling scriptwriter as he tries to concoct a terrifying screenplay for his hard-to-please boss - each short story being acted out for our benefit by a bunch of talentless actors...

All three vignettes revolve around a central premise - a haunted website (990714.com) which allows the average surfer to communicate with the underworld. Amazingly, the first story starts off rather well with a group of teenagers who've recently logged on to the site being picked off in gruesome fashion. This story soon degenerates into an incomprehensible mess, unfortunately - but compared to the tales to follow, it's a classic.

Stories 2 and 3 have interesting enough themes - a guardian angel ghost protecting a woman from vicious criminals and the seemingly impossible disappearance of a building's third floor - but their shoddy execution completely ruins any of the plot's promise. Any shocks are signposted well in advance and there isn't a single jump in the entire feature.

You can always tell how bad a movie is when it resorts to using maggots as a cheap scare and 990714.com does this on a number of occasions towards the end. Without exaggeration, this is abysmal - with terrible acting, awful direction, lacklustre plotting and, to quote a line from the English subtitle track on the DVD I watched, "it's stink". Enough said. * / *****

It's a movie regarding the Chinese Ghost Festival, the page from which you can contact the underworld (990714.com) and three short stories regarding several kinds of haunting.

The stories are progressive and laid out in a nice manner. Some things aren't that great, and happens for no reason (or so it seems) Elements from each of the stories are in some way connected to each other. Some basic Chonglish-subtitles, but rather good to be a HK B-movie.

I think the director has put these short stories together in a good way, intertwining them into each other. And I find the ending to be a bit "The Simpsons - Halloween-ish".

Not the best movie made, but certainly not the worst either. It makes time fly by, and it's a nobrainer. Go watch if (or not) ;)

This is a dreary ghost movie from Hong Kong, a story about a haunted website where people could communicate with the spirit world if they flog onto the website during the Chinese Ghost Festival.

The story sounds exciting, but the movie was executed with poor acting, a slow plot, dark cinematography, dreary visual effects and lack of suspense. It's perfectly fine to give this movie a pass.

Grade F

For a thriller movie, this goes incredibly too slow. It does not build up suspense to a high point, nor does it draw attention towards a central story. The story is very simple. The main group is goes to the website where it is said they can communicate with the dead. While doing so, the rest of the group (too many to remember their names) plans out a scheme to scare them into thinking they are actually communicating. It then turns serious as they are offed one by one. At first they think it's only a joke, but then more strange things start to happen. One highlight of the movie is a Big 2 (card game) scene where one guy gets a supreme hand but then all the other players disappear (they were ghosts). This barely kept my attention, and to be honest I had trouble sitting through the second half of this movie. 3/10.