Memories
Director/Screenplay – Kim Jee-woon, Producer – Oh Jung-wan, Photography – Hong Kyung-pyo Alex, Music – Lee Byung-woo, Digital Visual Effects – Mofac Studio, Makeup Effects – Cine X (Chug Il-jim, Kim Hoo-Sook & Kim Yong-se), Production Design – Jung Kuho.
Kim Hye-soo (Wife), Jung Bo-song (Husband)
The Wheel
Director – Nonzee Nimibutr, Screenplay – Nitas Singhamat, Based on an Idea by Ek Iemchuen & Nonzee Nimibutr, Producers – Duangkamol Limcharoen & Nonzee Nimibutr, Photography – Nattawut Kittikhun, Music – Sinnipa Sarasas & Apisit Wongchoti, Production Design – Rach-chanon Khayanngan. Production Company – Cinemasia.
Pongsanart Vinsiri (Master Tong), Suwinit Panjamawat (Gaan), Komgrich Yuttiyong (Master Tao), Pornchai Chuvanon (Plew), Vinn Vasinanon (Bua)
Going Home
Director – Peter Ho-sun Chan, Screenplay – Matt Chow & Jojo Hui, Story – Teddy Chen & Su Chao-pin, Producer – Jojo Hui, Photography – Christopher Doyle, Music – Cho Sung-woo & Peter Kam, Visual Effects Supervisor – To Kai-wing Ronald, Production Design – Yee Chung-man. Production Company – Applause Pictures.
Leon Lai (Yu), Eric Tsang (Chan Kwok-wai), Eugenia Yuan (Hai’er), Li Ting-Fung (Cheung), Lau Tsz-Wing (Yu’s Daughter)
Plot
Memories:- A husband is in a state of amnesia about what happened. His wife wakes up lying on the street and is in a state of confusion as she tries to make her way home. The Wheel:- Master Tao, a practitioner of Hun Lakhon Lek puppetry, is dying. He has requested that his puppets be destroyed but his rival Master Tong has ignored this and takes the puppets. This brings a curse on Master Tong because the puppets are inhabited by the lifeforce of their creator. Going Home:- Police officer Chan Kwok-wai moves into a Hong Kong apartment with his son Cheung. Cheung then goes missing. Chan believes that Cheung was playing with the neighbour’s daughter but the neighbour Yu denies having a daughter. Chan breaks into Yu’s apartment to find the body of Yu’s wife Hai’er there. Yu knocks Chan out, imprisoning him. Yu explains that he is a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. He had to kill his wife and keep her in a bath of herbs for three years to cure her. She is about to revive tomorrow.
Three was a horror Anthology that had the distinction of bringing together episodes from directors from three different Asian countries. The film was a modest success, although not outside of Asia. A sequel was produced with Three … Extremes (2004), bringing together three different, better known Asian directors with Takashi Miike, Bong Joon-ho and Fruit Chan. Unlike the first film, the sequel was a considerable international success, whereupon we then had the novelty of Three being repackaged and released as a sequel Three Extremes II.
The first episode Memories comes from South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, best known for films such as The Quiet Family (1998), A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), A Bittersweet Life (2005), I Saw the Devil (2010) and Illang: The Wolf Brigade (2018).
This suffers from the biggest problem that most of the episodes in Three Extremes II have – it is not clear what is going on and the episode takes far too long to do so. Anthology stories should be succinct, trimmed to the bone, designed to be told in 15-20 minutes and with a neat sting in the tail. By contrast, these three episodes are dragged out over a 128-minute running time, averaging 42.6 minutes apiece, usually twice the length of an anthology episode, and in most cases ignoring all of these storytelling basics.
With Memories, we have husband Jung Bo-song at home, suffering amnesia about what happened. He is haunted at seeing a woman taken away from a car crash and maybe sees his wife in the apartment. When we first meet his wife (Kim Hye-soo), she is lying in the middle of the street, apparently dead, but gets up and tries to make her way home. This includes getting into a taxi that abruptly accelerates away; and then going to a public bathroom where there is a rain of severed fingers in the sink as she tries to clean up. There is no real clue what is going on. I got the impression we were in some kind of Deathdream like Ian Hendry’s character in the Reflection of Death episode of Tales from the Crypt (1972). At the end, the husband gets up and takes a bag that contains what appear to be his wife’s body parts and drives away from town. What exactly is going on throughout is a complete puzzle.
The Wheel comes from Thai filmmaker Nonzee Nimibutr. Nonzee found acclaim on the festival circuit with his ghost story Nang Nak (1999) and went on to other works including the historical fantasy Queens of Langkasuka (2008).
The Wheel suffers from similar problems to Memories. Things happen in a plot that is non-linear and where key aspects of the narrative are left unspoken. One puppetmaster dies. Another appears to have taken or repurposed his puppets, which the introductory credits tells us have a life of their own. He is then haunted in some form of Supernatural Retribution. The plot shifts and moves between different characters but seems like a series of jigsaw pieces that have not been pieced together in any linear order.
Peter Ho-sun Chan is a Hong Kong filmmaker who has accrued acclaim and awards attention for films such as Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996), Perhaps Love (2005) and The Warlords (2007), among other. Going Home was his only venture into genre material so far, although he did act as a producer on the Pang Brothers’ The Eye (2002) and sequels.
Going Home is the best of the episodes and the only worthwhile one among the three. It develops a very nice chill when Eric Tsang enters Leon Lai’s apartment in search of his missing son to discover that Leon keeps the body of his wife in the bath. Eric is made a prisoner as Leon patiently explains that he is keeping his wife preserved with Chinese medicinal herbs and that she is about to return from the dead tomorrow after three years of healing. The rest of the episode plays out with a fascinating ambiguity where Leon seems a complete madman but is very patient and rational about it and there is just enough to suggest he might not be after all, before the end of the episode leaves everything unclear. The end also leaves what happened to the son unmentioned, as well who the ghost girl is, especially after Leon emphatically states that he and his wife did not have any children.
Trailer here