Re-cycle

Re-Cycle is something completely different than you would expect if you are familiar with the Pang brothers. It starts off as a horror movie, but than continues as a fantastic and inspired fantasy film. The movie has a deep and disturbing message, which really took me by surprise. The music and sound effects are amazing and pull you even further in the story. The story has a less is more approach which really suits the message. The computer animated pieces aren't always as stunning as you would hope, but they do the trick. This movie is really worth it to be seen. With this movie the Pang brothers have proved to be not only masters of horror, but also masters of fantasy.

Tsui Ting-Yin is a best-selling author and for her new book she decides to change genre and instead of writing love stories focus on the supernatural.When writing a chapter for her new book,entitled Re-Cycle,the supernatural she writes about appears to her in real life in the form of a woman.Afraid at first,Tsui Ting-Yin later follows the long-haired woman that appeared to her in order to be able to write more and is soon plunged into a world of fantasy and horror."Re-Cycle" plays more like a fantasy flick than horror.The film certainly looks truly beautiful and features some jaw-dropping scenery,unfortunately it lacks scares and is simply dull at times.Unlike their previous films,the building of nail-biting tension and creepy suspense did not play as big a part in "Re-Cycle".Overall,I expected more from the makers of "The Eye" and "Ab-normal Beauty".A solid 6 out of 10.

All writers ruthlessly re-cycle ideas, characters, memories and experiences. The creative mind is littered with discarded snippets of people and places all waiting to be remembered and put to use. In Re-cycle, Ting-Yin is a successful writer who turned a failed romance into three bestsellers. She is now working on a supernatural novel and strange things are happening in her house. Is this her inspiration, or is her story coming to life? The film's beginning is classically horror, but when Ting-Yin stumbles out of reality it becomes much more fantastic and really feels like a video game. She moves from one bizarre landscape to another, dealing with zombies as she goes.

Beautifully shot, the production is slick, but the story is more melodramatic than frightening.

I blame no one but myself for not loving this movie the first time around, as Re-Cycle is the posterchild for viewer-induced disappointment. For me personally, I expected something that mirrored the Silent Hill videogames – and considering how those Californian simpletons mucked up their attempt at a Silent Hill movie, I was drooling at the mouth to see if Re-Cycle succeeded where they had failed.

Obviously, I deluded myself into believing that Re-Cycle was trying to be something it was never meant to be. Needless to say, I was severely disappointed after an initial viewing. Where were all of the incredibly disturbing, blood-soaked images? Where were the detailed puzzles? Where were the violent death scenes? They were nowhere – and I was angry that Re-Cycle turned out to be its own movie with its own themes. Go figure.

Months later I started to think of the movie more and more. I thought to myself, "Yeah, that movie was mediocre, but that one scene was really cool." Then I pondered, "Wow, that other scene was sweet too, and that other one was awesome." Eventually, I decided to give it another go. That "other go" happened last night, and I ended up watching one heck of a movie.

The fantasy elements kick in at around the 40-minute mark, but Re-Cycle doesn't stoop to boring you during the opening segments with superfluous exposition. From minute one it grabs you with some well-executed (albeit conventional) horror elements that become much less conventional during a second viewing when you identify references to the main theme of the film.

Once the fantasy elements hit, Re-Cycle becomes a non-stop fantasy adventure. I cannot remember a horror film in recent memory with such relentless pacing. Much of this is owed to its fragmented transport of the lead protagonists. They may escape one danger by going through a door, but on the other side of that door is a completely different environment that is no less perilous. Some have criticized Re-Cycle for being scattershot and unfocused, but I would respectfully disagree considering how almost every single horror element references back to the overarching theme of the film. It's no masterpiece, but it works quite well – especially when you identify the references upon a second viewing.

I truly feel sorry for Hollywood fanboys. East Asian cinema already mops the floor with Western cinema in terms of scriptwriting, cinematography, hand-to-hand action sequences, sound, youthful acting talent, and sheer originality (just to name a few). Now, they've given us a fantasy film that mops the floor with the excessively bloated, overrated, self-indulgent twaddle known as Lord of the Rings.

Take the ending to Re-Cycle as an example. The finale within the Transit realm is quite simply the most intense, incredible fantasy sequence I've ever seen. I must admit that I've rewatched that scene about 30 times over the past few days. I'm totally, unequivocally ADDICTED to it. It's so much better than any scene in LOTR.

Better yet, I didn't have to slug through a bunch of generic characters speaking painfully generic dialogue while walking very, very slowly within vast landscapes for 600 friggin minutes like LOTR. Nor did I have to sit through half a dozen superfluous, drawn-out endings stacked one on top of the other. That might be the formula for winning Oscars and attracting moviegoers who like their fantasy films as vanilla as humanly possible, but I personally like my fantasy films with some – oh, I don't know – emotion. In a nutshell, Re-Cycle elicited some excitement (especially near the end), whereas LOTR stagnated in a realm of perpetual boredom.

On a side note, I can't really understand why Oxide Pang is so relentlessly criticized (to the point of unreasonableness) by so many people. It's exceedingly ironic that the people who complain about his scripts are the very same people who shout "masterpiece" when referring to those Japanese horror flicks from the 1960s (which will remain nameless) that have some of the worst scriptwriting in the history of horror cinema. In addition, Oxide's use of camera and sound is exceptional, and probably second only to Ryuhei Kitamura or Christopher Doyle.

Nothing this guy does is ever good enough for anyone, even though his movies are better than 90% of everyone else's. Diary, The Detective, Abnormal Beauty, Re-Cycle, The Eye, and Revenge (from the Bangkok Haunted anthology) combine to form the most impressive recent horror/thriller portfolio outside of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Compare Oxide Pang to any American horror director and guy becomes an instant legend.

Up front let's save a lot of people some time: this is NOT A HORROR MOVIE. So if you're looking for a flick that'll make you spill your popcorn and dig your nails into the flesh of the unlucky person sitting next to you (hopefully not a total stranger), you might want to look elsewhere.

"Re-Cycle" is the quintessential "morality tale". A morality tale is typically a fantasy that makes heavy use of symbolism and allegory, often personifying human traits into characters (like the 7 deadly sins). The protagonist undergoes a surreal journey with episodic events that relate to some moral message. "Dante's Inferno", the 14th century epic poem (not to be confused with "Dante's Peak" the 1997 flick about a guy chasing a volcano), is a great example of a morality tale. And now a few centuries later we have "Re-cycle" (original Cantonese title "Gwai wik" or "Ghost Land").

The story is about a romance author Ting-Yin (Angelica Lee) who decides to write her first horror story. She is told in the beginning that writing horror stories brings out ghosts. And so the stage is set. But like I said, this is not a horror story but instead it's a dark (often scary) fantasy about Ting-Yin's descent into a bizarre, disturbing world of ghosts and creepers and AWESOME imagery.

Enough about the plot; it's the imagery I want to focus on because the plot is best left for you to experience. Initially shot in very cold, claustrophobic scenes, the film comes alive once Ting-Yin enters the new realm. From there we see grand, majestic and terrible landscapes which I can only compare to the imaginative visuals of Tarsem ("The Cell", "The Fall"), Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("City of Lost Children") and Terry Gilliam ("Brazil"). A lot was done with digital effects, but a lot was also constructed with life-size props such as the stunning abandoned amusement park with its towering, rusted ferris wheel. Side note: that scene was a recreation of a real amusement park that was demolished years ago, and like a lot of sets, it has special significance to people familiar with the original Chinese locations they depict. Me, I've never been to China, but I watched the "Making Of" featurette where they explain a lot of this stuff.

The movie carries a tense vibe, augmented with some very creepy moments which may actually make you spill your popcorn come to think of it. Then there are some absolutely poetic moments. If I had to fault this film for anything, it would be that I wanted more of the poetic moments, like the "orchard of abandoned love" deleted scene... why?? Well, I know why. Probably because they needed to keep things tense and scary for mass appeal. That comes with the business, I guess.

The message of the movie is a great one, and it applies to each and every person out there. And no, it's not just about recycling your plastic haha. Watch it and you'll find out. If the film succeeds with you as it did with me, it may make you appreciate the little things in life a little bit more. For some odd reason I feel the uncontrollable urge to go rescue a dog from an animal shelter. That's not in the movie, but at the end maybe you'll understand my point.