Ji wu

When I was given the chance to watch "Ji Wu" (aka "Buyer Beware") of course I jumped at the chance, because I do love Hong Kong cinema quite a lot.

The initial concept that "Ji Wu" offered was interesting. I should say that I didn't even read the synopsis for the movie, I just saw it was a horror movie and an Asian movie, two elements put together that I do enjoy. So I entered the movie with a blank canvas to be painted with impressions.

The movie started off nicely, but director Jeffrey Chiang effectively managed to squander that perfectly. The movie had great potential, but the director opted to take it into a place that made very little sense and the characters ended up as being irrelevant characters that you didn't really care about after all.

The special effects were fairly adequate, not great mind you. Especially when taking into consideration that this was a 2018 movie. There were a few jump scares in the movie, but if you are a seasoned veteran to the horror genre, you see them coming a mile away.

"Ji Wu" was an average movie, and offers some entertainment that makes it worth watching a single time. But that is about it, you will watch it once, and never return to it again, because it has no solid contents to it that would sustain more than a single viewing.

Buyer Beware looks like an amalgamation of horror tropes, however, unlike a parody\satire - this movie actually tries to make something out of these tropes. It doesn't have great CGI, or outstanding actors... or even particularly scary scenes. But, to me, it was still entertaining, I was interested in how it would all resolve, even if it was somewhat predictable. Probably most of all I liked the idea, enough to want to see a sequel, because the setting is there. It could easily rival current mainstream Hollywood jump-scare fests. Mainly because, unlike those jump-scare fests that have nothing in common, the idea about real-world hauntings and their... ehm... application - is something new. Mostly we see one-off movies focused on a particular subject. And, as much as they try to franchise it - they end up one-off with only CGI to save them(and, sometimes, the actors). This budget picture doesn't need either. Sometimes you see a horror and it doesn't work out, because... it's just empty. But this movie has a setting, and I hope they'll build up on it. Don't watch it expecting to be scared, watch it to find an interesting take on the already over-used cliches.

This film had a plot that was interesting. The acting isn't awful but the script could've used a little more attention. It had a couple creepy moments but it wasn't all that scary to me. I didn't really care for how it ended. This is one for a rainy day or a way to pass some time.