Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I think this is one of the films I’ll be seeing at the Fantasia festival in Montreal next week, so I’m going to post this review without reading it too closely. I want to go in clean on as many of the Fantasia films as possible, and that means not having other people’s opinions bouncing around in my head.
For those of you who are still trying to make sense of Leslie Cheung’s tragic suicide last year, this is the final film we’re going to see him in, and the subject matter is particularly unnerving as a result of the context. Check this out:
Harry, you're the best: don't let those Hulk Hogan groupies tell you any different.
I decided to check out INNER SENSE after Cisca, a Chinese-Indonesian friend of mine, told me she couldn't sleep for two nights after watching it.
At first glance INNER SENSE seems to be a cheap ripoff of SIXTH SENSE. After all, Hollywood is constantly ripping off Hong Kong films, so why shouldn't it work the other way round too, right?
But INNER SENSE is in a whole other league than the Bruce Willis vehicle. It concerns Yan, a young woman with a history of psychicatric problems who sees ghosts. She is lucid and cogent and it is hard to believe that she is simply hallucinating. However, her psychiatrist, Jim Law (Leslie Cheung in his last movie before his suicide) believes that the ghosts she sees are repressed memories of past events that keep emerging at inopportune times.
The horror scenes are great and rivetting (she must also have the creepiest landlord in Hong Kong).
After a long and painful process, Cheung cures her and the curse is lifted. Cheung's theory that there is no such thing as ghosts is redeemed in her eyes. But then the unexpected and inexplicable occurs.... Cheung himself is brought to the very edge of madness when he starts seeing ghosts! Has the curse been passed on to him? Or is he going mad?
INNER SENSE is a psychological horror/thriller that never slows its pace. Like INFERNAL AFFAIRS it is absolutely non-stop tension and the film draws you in from the very beginning and doesn't let you go.
MAJOR SPOILER!!!!!
In this film Cheung's character committed suicide by jumping off a building. He almost died because he could not reconcile himself with a past event. However, in the end he doesn't jump because he was able to make peace with the past... and with himself. Interestingly enough, after shooting this film, Cheung leapt to his death from a tall building! How can you take this? Don't tell me the curse that left the woman and then left the psychiatrist was passed on to the actor!!! Or could Cheung not reconcile himself with his past? Was he too impressionable and the premise of the film turn out to be too much for him?
In any case, knowing that the lead actually killed himself (as he did in FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE) adds a creepy subtext to the film.
END SPOILER
All in all, a superlative HK film. You see, unlike SIXTH SENSE which I found a bit sappy, this one is much more hard-hitting BECAUSE IT IS REAL. While SIXTH SENSE is a bedtime story, in INNER SENSE ghosts are not some unreal bogeyman that comes back from the netherworld or some such X-file like tripe. IN FACT THEY ARE SOMETHING MUCH WORSE. They are part of our psyches; they are our past; and as such, we cannot flee them or ignore them.
And I'm sure we all have ghosts... hope you can all sleep after watching this one... I know I can't.
Call me
SLEEPLESS IN ASIA
Wow. I’m certainly looking forward to getting a peek at this as soon as possible. Thanks for the review.
"Moriarty" out.
