Hung bou yit sin ji Dai tao gwai ying

A late night radio show program asks people to ring in with any weird stories or unexplainable experiences they have encountered. During one of those calls a person named Chris, tells of a bizarre encounter he had three decades ago of a hideous baby with a massive head. So naturally the radio producer and American TV crew investigates the sinister story and finds themselves in one big mystery that doesn't want to be solved.

'Horror Hotline… big head monster' mixes bits of 'It's alive' and 'The Blair Witch Project' together. Now don't let this title fool you, as this is no comedy, but a creative and taut psychological/horror film that plays on the things you don't see, but from what you hear and sense.

The idea is rather absurd, but on the other-hand quite haunting. The film is pretty much story driven, with a fairly thorough back-story of ponderous exposition- but it never let's violence or gore take control… actually there's hardly any. Throughout the film the legend of the baby is always on our mind- but we never see it fully, even though it's always implied, heard (baby crying & snarling) or even discussed by the characters, which makes it more unnerving and tense. While still keeping your complete interest.

With a filming and narrative style very similar to that of the film 'The Blair Witch Project' and it's morbid atmosphere leaves one lasting impression. It holds some exceptional images of terror and eerie sound effects that leaves you with some chills and as well as some fair shocks. Though, definitely not cheap ones. It has a superb soundtrack that gets under your skin, while the moody and sombre performances from Francis Ng, as the radio producer and Josie Ho as an American TV reporter are fairly hypnotic.

After getting into the mystery of the big headed baby legend you just feel a little disappointed with the open-ended conclusion. With it leaving you with more questions than before, but still the abrupt ending is quite spine-tingling and the pacing of the film was reasonably solid.

Overall this wasn't great by any means but quite a surprise. I didn't have high expectations for it after seeing the title and watching such disappointments in the Asian horror field before this 'Rasen' and 'St John's Wort'. It's not for all tastes and it might bore some people, if you're looking for splatter or violence.

Definitely worth a look if your into Asian or psychological horror.

The summary says it all. Any movie with Francis Ng in a large role (in this case, the leading role) can't be completely bad. This is the case with HORROR HOTLINE, which despite the silly title and even sillier ending, the rest of the movie is a terrific suspense/horror. Again, the only thing that goes against HORROR HOTLINE is its reliance on trying to ape THE BLAIR WITCH, but otherwise it's an effective and moody film.

Francis Ng delivers a terrific starring turn as the host of a radio program while Josie Ho has one of her better outings as an American reporter whose crew is in Hong Kong doing a story on Chinese urban legend. But the only reason to watch this film is for Francis Ng subtle and yet chilling performance.

Good stuff that may be ruined by a goofy title and being too similar to BLAIR WITCH.

6 out of 10.

I'd consider myself a pretty jaded horror fan. I almost never get frightened or creeped out by a horror movie these days. Despite being hailed as one of the scariest films of all time, Ring didn't frighten me much but I was impressed enough by it to start hunting down more Asian horror movies.

I had read one or two good but vague things about Horror Hotline so when I saw a copy I pounced on it and watched it at 2 in the morning.

It made my hair stand on end.

Literally.

The directors responsible for the bilge that passes for horror coming out of Hollywood these days should be made to watch Horror Hotline and hang their heads in shame. Any horror fan who likes dark, mature, serious, eerie horror needs a copy of this film.

Once again Asian horror has surpassed my expectations and is clearly the front runner for the genre at the current time. This film revolves around a radio station that receives calls regarding the supernatural. However one story about a big headed baby comes in and captures the attention of both the studio boss and a crew of reporters...I won't say anymore to avoid giving anything away.

Asian horror is all based around the same concept which is to create a story (usually a ghost story) and build on this story for the majority of the movie until it reaches a very effective and frightening conclusion. This film in my opinion is possibly my favorite along with Dark Water, due to the way it involves the audience, has an ending that leaves open the entire film, creates tension and atmosphere through the use of jump zoom shots and a very spooky soundtrack. All in all this is a must if you can track it down!

Version: Cantonese, with English subtitles (by SBS)

Wow. Talk about a dull movie. I figured a Hong-Kong horror movie with a silly name like 'Horror Hotline... Big Head Monster' being shown on the SBS cult-movie time slot could not possibly be bad. All the other cult-horror movies shown SBS are generally pretty good. Maybe I expected too much, but 'Horror Hotline' is just a boring movie.

The Horror Hotline is a radio show that discusses the supernatural. Several callers talk about a big-headed infant they've seen, and the Horror Hotline reporters decide to investigate this, when, naturally, everything starts getting spooky.

I don't know why, but I just could not get into 'Horror Hotline'. It seems like it could be a great eerie horror film, but I just found it rather boring, and it left no lasting effect afterwards.

'Horror Hotline' could be something that I'll try to watch some other time. I may even enjoy it if I'm given enough time between viewings. As it stands, I thought it was rather dull. I'd still recommend it to other horror fans though, maybe you'll get more out of this than I did - 4/10