Three

Three Extremes 2 (2002)

** (out of 4)

Lions Gate is releasing this title next week but it's original title is Three, the "inspiration" for what would become Three Extremes. I guess the popularity of that title is why Lions Gate selected to make this appear as a sequel when it's actually the first film. Kim Jee-Woon's Memories has a woman lost in the streets without any memory of who she is. She has one phone number that she keeps trying to call but when she can't reach anyone she just continues to walk around hoping her memory will return. Nonzee Nimibutr's The Wheel has an old man dying and leaving behind puppets, which are cursed and start to come to life. Peter Ho-Sun Chan's Going Home has a cop searching for his missing son when he is kidnapped by a man who keeps his "wife" locked inside their apartment. These three films aren't any good but the first and third one are the most interesting. The second film dealing with the puppet is quite poor without any good moment. The first and third stories are the best.

After watching the original 3 EXTREMES, one might expect the so-called "sequel" 3 EXTREMES II to be as, or even more unsettling, gory, or terrifying.

Is it?

Well, not really. While the first film was refreshingly bizarre and somewhat revolting in spots, this follow-up is rather mild with fewer shocks or gross-out story lines. It's also far more concerned with the supernatural than its predecessor.

The three stories involve ghosts, curses, and reanimation along with some dismemberment and murder. All three tales are good. Just don't expect another thriller full of disturbing subject matter and stomach-turning revelations...

Actually made before the more popular 3 Extremes, but released afterward in most of the world. These three directors are less bankable than Takashi Miike and Chan-wook Park, though Ji-woon Kim does have A Tale of Two Sisters under his belt. Plus, it's much weaker. 3 Extremes, in my mind, is maybe the greatest horror anthology ever made, so this one has a lot to live up to. It begins with Kim's "Memories", which has some familiar Asian ghost story elements, but concentrates more on the images and moods than actual plot. In fact, the plot is fairly incoherent, though, after having seen the whole thing, it's easy enough to piece together what exactly is going on. I liked it quite a bit. Nonzee Nimibutr from Thailand comes next with "The Wheel". It's also a film that relies more on images than the story, which is about cursed puppets. The images are pretty, but the short is kind of lame. It's not terrible, but it's definitely the low point of this anthology. And then we come to Peter Chan's contribution, "Going Home". This one is the reason to watch this film. Gorgeously shot by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle, it's about a cop and his son who move into a new apartment building. The boy is annoyed by a small, creepy girl who lives across the way, and one day he disappears. While looking for his son, the cop discovers that the neighbor whom he thought was the girl's father is involved in some weird stuff. This one is just outstanding - and completely emotionally draining - and it gets better the more I think about it.

The Asian anthology movie "The Three ", in which three directors from three different countries ( South Korea/Thailand/Hong Kong ) craft individual tales unrelated & wonderful !

A)- The 1st anthology from South Korea (( Memories )){40 minutes} by "Ji Woon Kim" where he presents segment of mystery that try to be so scary . - He's the same director who's presented to us on 2003 , Korea's No.#1 Horror Movie (( A Tale Of Two Sisters ))

*Abu Jarrah's Rating 4/5

B)- The 2nd anthology from Thailand (( The Wheel )){36 minutes} by "Nonzee Nimibutr" who presented his big budget for the ghost story in his well-known film "Nang Nak" inside his segment he's presented an tale of cursed Doll .

*Abu Jarrah's Rating 3/5

C)- The 3rd anthology from Hong Kong (( Going Home )){53 minutes} by "Peter Chan" is the most powerful segment in anthologies .

Who the produced of the famous Hong Kong horror movies as " The Eye 1 & 2" he also produce of "The Eye" remade , and he's the same who directed the pretty romantic first-love film "Comrades: Almost a Love Story"

*Abu Jarrah's Rating 5/5

By the way: There's another version for this segment "Going Home" called [Going Home : Director's Cut] It contains eight minutes of extra scenes not included in the original release ! [61 Mins] (to the best of my knowledge)

As a post-Halloween presentation, Titus Brandsma Center, a Carmelite-run service organization here, held a screening of 3 Asian horror films:Higuchinsky's 'Uzumaki'(Japan), Youn-Hyun Chang's 'Tell Me Something'(South Korea) and 'Three', a trilogy of shorts by Ji-Woon Kim(S. Korea), Nonzee Nimibutr(Thailand) and Peter Chan(Hong Kong). The conceit behind the event was to "run along the same vein" as 'The Ring', a trend-setting, box-office hit Japanese spine-tingler(recently shown on Philippine television in a tolerable Filipino-dubbed version).

OK, 'Uzumaki'(which translates in English as "spiral" or "vortex")is a bizaare study in communal fixation and paranoia, with any swirl-shaped object as the ubiquitous motif. This debut film by Higuchinsky(who worked before as a director of music videos)succeeds in conveying the sense of collective disturbance and fear that grips the small community of Kuzouguchi, its distinguishing claustrophobic quality brings to mind the kind evoked by David Lynch in 'Blue Velvet'--it's only that the Japanese director takes one step further with his really, really fantastic and grotesque turn of events. But I guess that to fully enjoy the film, one should take it AS IT IS, with any "interpretation" of the purported "metaphorical" significance of the spiral following later(in my case, much, much later, if ever).

While 'Tell Me Something', bad luck of all bad lucks, was the much-maligned film in the line-up--with good reason. For despite its fair share of gore and tension, and a good-looking lead pair(the lieutenant and the lady under surveillance), a stubborn fact still shows up:that the film is another jaded offspring of the jaded serial-killer genre(it doesn't really take a lot of mindwork to guess, about 45 minutes--or even less!--into the film, who the murderer is;now, even this is a jaded remark!). Strangely though, on 2nd viewing, I began to find 'Tell Me Something' to be kind of interesting(it appeared that it wasn't really that bad), for at least, it scored a few points in the following:having a toned-down tension, evoking a noirish atmosphere with its rain-drenched urban locale at night and going against the "obligatory" fate of the lead pair being eventually romantically or sexually involved with one another(never mind the lack of a well-defined motivation, anyway, the two are as aloof to each other as they are to the viewers)--sigh, even this is a jaded indulgence!

But I still believe that Korean Cinema is one of the exciting film industries that we have, serving us with a good number of brave and provocative films in recent years, among them, Chul-Soo Park's '301/302', Jin-Ho Hur's 'Christmas in August', Ki-Duk Kim's 'The Isle' and 'Address Unknown', Jung-Ji Woo's 'Happy End' and Ji-Young Chang's 'The White Badge.'

Thankfully, the best was saved for the last, for 'Three' was the clear favorite of the audience(including myself). To be noted particularly are the 1st and 3rd episodes:Kim's 'Memories' and Chan's 'Going Home'(I wish I could say the same for the 2nd short). What I'm interested is how did these 2 episodes work upon the emotion of fear, as it's a given fact that such feeling is the one that films of the horror genre want to arouse mainly from the audience.

In 'Memories', where does fear spring forth? As it turns out, it's from the husband's(Bo-Seok Jong)"ghost of his own making", so to speak, as there's a terrible secret that he tries painfully to conceal. He may have succeeded in keeping it from other people's notice, but definitely not from the prodding of his own conscience, thus the hallucinations and nightmares(even if it appears that these don't seriously bother him at all!).

As it should be, the viewers don't completely have any idea about this "secret" at the start of the film, but through Kim's skillful interweaving of the husband's and the "lost" woman's(Hye-Suk Kim)respective scenes--he, as he confronts his terrifying nightmares;she, as she wanders through a barely-inhabited city, where various omens singularly happen to her--all told with little use of dialogues, it little by little builds up toward the grisly revelation, its utterly nightmarish quality is like Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe have joined forces for the modern times.

The director may have relied on "old tricks" to scare the audience(anyway, it worked), but the best thing is that we can make sense of the fear thus evoked, we can "connect" with it. And this, the fear of having done a terrible misdeed and of having to face up with the nightmares(or "bad memories")that consequently spin out of one's own sinful act--whether one gets away with it or not.

On the other hand, watching 'Going Home' is like watching an assortment of 'Psycho', 'Awakenings' and 'The Sixth Sense.' However, it's of such a potent tragicomic quality that the viewers are still put under the spell, brought into force by a marvelous confluence of terrific performances(with Leon Lai at the forefront)and astounding mood photography(predominantly slimy green)by Wong Kar-Wai's "recording angel", Christopher Doyle.

Going through my files, I came upon my few notes on an early work by Chan, 'He's a Man, She's a Woman'(featuring the late Leslie Cheung), a hilarious comedy of errors-cum-ugly duckling tale-cum-gay film. Having this film in mind as I try to recollect 'Going Home', it makes sense why odd humor shows up from some nooks and crannies of this otherwise poignant and eerie tale of the transgressive power of love. Handled foolishly, this uncomfortable blending of humor and horror might've churned out another low-grade and campy shocker('Starship Troopers' and 'The House on Haunted Hill', anyone?).

Whenever the emotion of fear is aroused in us by this awarded episode, it's FOR Leon Lai's bespectacled, agonizing character--for his not being able to bring up the kind of family that he deserves, for his failure to achieve what could've constituted his happiness in this temporal life(the episode's title, in fact, implies "being with one's family"). And so, as in 'Memories', the "fear factor" here makes sense.