Mon seung

"Diary" ("Mon Seung") initially had my hopes up for being something particularly interesting, as it is a Pang brothers movie. But I suppose I had my expectations up a little bit too high. The movie didn't deliver to the extend I had hoped.

That being said, I am not saying that "Diary" is a bad or boring movie, not at all. It just wasn't what I had expected from the story summary I had read.

The story is about a lonely and somewhat delusional woman named Winnie (played by Charlene Choi) who spends her time making marionette puppets and writing in her diary. She misses her boyfriend Seth a lot and keeps calling him and leaving him messages. Seth doesn't return these calls though, and she decides to meet him at his work place. There she runs into Ray, who bears a strong resemblance to Seth, and they start a relationship.

Initially, then the story wasn't all that strong or powerful. There were aspects to it that seemed not really properly thought through or planned well. And as such, the movie had a tendency to become jumpy and a little bit incoherent at times.

The DVD claims 'packed with mind-bending twists and turns, this riveting psychological thriller from the creators of The Eye is packed with eye-popping special effects and will keep you guessing until the final, shocking ending!'. Alright, did we watch the same movie here? Perhaps whomever wrote that had a special edition of the movie that I hadn't, because I couldn't really put that label on the movie.

It was nice to see Charlene Choi in a movie such as this, and have her move away from those sugar-coated love romantic comedies that she usually works with. And she managed to step out into a darker universe with grace, because she really performed well in this movie.

For an Asian horror movie, then "Diary" was a fairly mediocre result, and there are far better horror movies on the Asian movie market if you want to be properly scared. And definitely not one of the Pang brother's best movies.

Charlene Choi is a schizophrenic woman obsessed with another man (played by Shawn Yue) in this film by director Oxide Pang. The condition of schizophrenia is given ample attention and the script is exceedingly well-written and complex. The visuals are dark with limited (yet effective) use of CGI to communicate important elements to the viewer. There are a lot of twists and turns within this originally structured storyline, but in the end they are all logical extensions when the film is studied and understood properly. This is one of the best horror films I've ever had the pleasure of watching.

If Gillian Chung had her breakthrough performance in Beyond Our Ken (2004), then Charlene Choi has now officially had her breakthrough performance in Diary (2006). She's practically unrecognizable from her previous roles. She's psychologically fragile, obsessive, desperate, subtle, and very unstable. In other words, she's fantastic.

The cinematography and settings are gorgeous, using a variety of techniques to create a dim, murky atmosphere. Some scenes are in black-and-white, while others are shot with restricted colors. The overall feel of the film reminded me of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's work, absent the ambient soundtrack – Oxide uses his trademark horror beats to great effect here. The limited CGI is very fantasy-like, which is interesting considering the fact that it occurs within an apartment. Basically, Diary is eye candy from minute one.

It is ironic that all of the great storytelling that was lacking from Re-Cycle (2006) has miraculously appeared in Diary. It's almost as if the Pangs decided to sacrifice the former for the latter, because Diary simply could not be written more effectively. It acts like a mystery that slowly reveals itself until the very last frame. There is a significant focus on character perspective and subjectivity that ultimately provides the driving force.

Most of the reviews I've read have been positive. However, some have taken issue with the structure that Oxide chose to use. Needless to say, it's wacked out and totally different than most movies. I don't want to get too specific, but all I will say is that I thought the movie had ended a number of times before it actually did. Fortunately, all of those "extra" scenes were the best parts. I personally think that the critics are misguided, since the weird format works very well.

Let's put it this way. I've seen over 200 East Asian horror films, and Diary ranks among the top 5.

Rating: A magnificent 5 out of 5.

Winnie Leung is a lonely woman that likes to make puppets and write her diary, and she misses her boy-friend Seth Lau, who left her after breaking up their relationship. Winnie leaves messages in his mail box and unsuccessfully tries to contact him in his job. When she meets Ray Fan, she tells him that his resemblance with Seth is amazing. Ray moves to her place and when Winnie's next door snoopy neighbors calls the police because of the smell in her apartment, a dark secret is disclosed in her diary.

"Diary" is a claustrophobic, almost theatrical and impressive movie directed by the stunning Oxide Pang Chun and certainly among his best works. The story is very well tied-up in spite of having many twists, with the last one showing the reality, in a magnificent screenplay written by the Pang brothers. The fantastic performance of the lead actress Charlene Choi, who builds the process of insanity of her fragile, depressive and scary character without any need of grimaces like in most American movies, gives total credibility to this sinister tale. The cinematography uses of black and white and a limited range of colors prevailing the green to give a gloomy and very sad atmosphere. I regret that only a few viewers have had the chance to see this great "little movie" since there are only 92 votes in IMDb. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Sometimes when you're being derivative good things transpire, and that in itself can deliver a more shocking revelation than all the cheesy FX and predictable chillers put together.

This is what happens with The Diary, a foray once more into the Pang Brothers breech with their entourage of Thai filmmakers and knack for intelligent gore. After the disappointing Recycle set the prolific siblings back a bit, it's pleasant to see them back in moderately satisfying form with a short yet titillating release timed nicely for the Halloween season.

On the surface, The Diary seems like it's bound for also-ran perdition, hinting just a slight too much at working that tired old The Eye magic one time too many. Even its main star, Charlene Choi, puts on a spectacular Angelica Lee imitation to the point where at the onset of proceedings wary viewers will be tempted to give up and call it a write off.

Do not: perseverance here is a bona fide virtue, and The Diary has going for it more than meets, well, the eye. Ironically, those very fears of this effort descending into a realm of rip-off fiascoes save it from a fate worse than celluloid death. As soon as one thinks they've seen it before, which they have in many ways, The Diary comes charging through to twist those well-worn elements and throw our own jaded sights right back at us.

Choi dabbles in some of her best acting yet as disturbed Winnie (Leung Wing Ni we believe in the original Cantonese), a lone young woman trapped in a bizarrely old-fashioned dwelling full of marionettes and assorted memories. She has a diary going on, although it's not as imperative to events as the title suggests. Instead, this film revolves around perceptions, memories and knowing what's real. The prime horror here aren't ghosts, devils or monsters, but the worst enemy a person could ever have: their own mind.

Winnie struggles with sadness and guilt over the parting of her boyfriend Seth, until meeting another man whom she believes to look remarkably like the flame lost. However, this entanglement soon also takes on sinister undertones. The man, Ray, offers scant solace and never truly feels to Winnie the way a significant other should. Wonder why. Ray's done by Shawn Yue, an excellent performer in his own right and worthy successor to sensitive-manly icons a la Chow Yun Fat and Di Long. Yue deploys his full range of down-to-earth but superlative tricks to help immerse us in the story, making up for The Diary's obvious genre associations and further highlighting serious acting going on here.

Another boon comes from Isabella Leung (accidentally credited as Isabbela), doing Winnie's friend and sounding board, although, much like Ray, she too never really behaves the way you'd expect from someone who cares.

The trio move around The Diary's reality, or lack thereof, with a pervasive sense of malaise, affecting the movie's delectable mood of diseased uncertainty. We must again mention their surprising and impressive work as seen here, something to write about, home or otherwise. They're not usually considered part of the annual awards posse, and so it's quite gratifying to behold the potent characterizations rendered so eloquently for the benefit of audiences willing to look past pop-star prejudices.

Coupled with dozens of genuinely puzzling moments and several startling devices, they add up to a promising product that's by far the best Pang Bros outing since The Eye itself wowed us over four years ago.

Despite its reasonable IIB rating, The Diary fields some gore and more than that beckons with the suggestion of things terrible lurking in the background. Its staunch refusal to commit to specifics such as time and place defy the desire to put it in neat brackets. There's dated entries from the diary Winnie keeps, but those eventually turn out to mean next to nothing in themselves. As for geography, the close-cropped cinematography denies the broad vistas needed for reassurances, as visuals deny audiences the comfort of knowing where and why anecdotes unfold. All we see are basically glimpses or brief vignettes of apartments, markets and office buildings. There's very little context, an important tool in establishing surrealism. However, this could conceivably have something to do with the Pangs maybe trying to pass the mainland off for HK due to cost cutting. Another mystery, apparently.

Its short runtime alludes to The Diary's potential as a chapter in a Three Extremes-esquire project, as does Winnie with her penchant for "cookery". But just when it could have bowed out on a note of unresolved malice, its makers run away and close with extra scenes consisting of resolution we could have done better without.

Even so, and despite lacking the brute force of a mind blower, The Diary has enough pseudo-horror intelligence and winding twists to be enjoyable. It likely won't stand the test of time in the long run, but nonetheless does something to inject more life into a thread of movie-making beset with settling for average and using one pasty-faced protagonist too many.

For those on the prowl and looking to sink gnashing teeth into something fun and dark at the same time, The Diary comes recommended.

A psychological slow burn that will suck you into it's depressive atmosphere and when you think you have everything figured out, the final twist delivers a worthy shock.