After the success of her romance trilogy, young female author Tsui Ting-Yin decides to turn her hand to a new genre. Her upcoming novel Re-cycle she has decided will be a tale of the supernatural. How ever after her PR announces the books new title to the public before she has even put pen to paper or finger to keyboard she begins to feel the pressure and soon suffers writing block. Tsui finds herself writing and then throwing away ideas. How ever the discarded idea's start to act as premonitions for events in Tsui Ting-Yin's life.
Tsui Ting-Yin's writing transports her to another world where forgotten things go. Unused idea's, lost memories abanded childhood toys and a host of lost souls. There she meets and old man and a young girl who essentially form tour guides as she moves from landscape to landscape. Falling bodies that get up and walk, a "half finished" tall woman, restless souls and living aborted foetus' block her path as she trys to escape the re-cyle which erodes the fabric of this strange new world and her to if she does not move fast enough. Why do fantasy worlds on film have to always suffer with dissapearing???
The Pang Brothers Danny and Oxide (Bangkok Dangerous, Bangkok Haunted , The Eye) much anticipated Re-cycle see's them up the anti in terms of visual style. After the trailers which showed off the films seemingly fantastic visual effects Re-cycle quickly became one of my most anticipated movies. How ever as much as I wanted this to be amazing it's just not. Not that it’s a bad movie, it’s not but it does have some glaring issues that can't be ignored. The CGI effects on which the film relies are great for the most part, how ever a large proportion of the film is very dark. It almost looks as though the print was darkened and tints used to cover patchy effects which would have looked poor if the definition was clear. For a film shot for the most part in daylight or a studio there is no excuse to have viewers straining their eyes to pick out details. I get the feeling the some of these effects are just not as good as you think and it’s a bit of a trick of a brain deprived of detail. I would go as far as saying the darkness of the image is something which spoils much of the film. The films plot and effects also "Borrow" very heavily not only from other films in particular the "Creepy" Asian ghost stories which have been in vogue for the past through years, but undeniably heavily from the Silent Hill video games. Having just watched Christophe Gans and Roger Avary’s Silent Hill adaptation for the first time the day before watching this I was amazed at how strikingly similar they are. Also the first 30 to 35 minutes of this film are with out a doubt fucking boring. Yeah yeah the Pang's are the savants of film editing in Asia, but boring is boring no matter how many different camera angles and rapid edits you use. For a film sold entirely on the basis of its other worldly visual effects, waiting over half an hour for them to begin while watching a sub par not even vaguely creepy rehash of every other Asian ghost film since Ringu is not fun.
When Tsui Ting-Yin does make it to the "world of re-cycle" the film does pick up, the darkness of the image is an issue, but some of the scenes are brilliant. And while I am not convinced the effects are always as good as you think they are, the idea's visualised by them are excellent. With being stuck in a weird tunnel of unborn foetus’ being a personal highlight, especially the attack of the giant foetus which has to make any film worth watching, along with the "I accidentally trod on a living foetus" incident. Other highlights include a landscape made up entirely of giant forgotten toys, a land of the forgotten dead and some hanging victims with cool stretchy necks. Once Re-cycle finally gets going you can forgive many of its floors and the second half of the movie slowly becomes more and more enjoyable as it goes on and by the end with the beginning largely forgotten it has become an enjoyable experience.
Re-cycle is well worth seeing, but sadly it’s not the film I was hoping for and I expect many people will feel the same way. If only the Pangs would hire a decent screenwriter and really think about plot. There is only so much wow you can achieve with effects and only so many mistakes even the most talented editors can cover. Effects should form a films epidermis, not its body otherwise the whole thing just feels hollow. How ever I do love dark fairytales and fantasy’s so did enjoy more than I disliked and Re-cycle is certainly better than the likes of the similarly themed Mirrormask. 7/10
DVD: The region 3 DVD is great, but the subtitles are very obviously done by someone for whom English is a second language. The translations are often very literal, which I suspect means they are more accurate than many, but they don't always reflect grammatically correct English. This is not a huge problem and in no way spoils the film, but it's worth noting. The one thing which is kind of annoying is the fact an old man is constantly referred to as granny until the last part of the film. Also worth noting is that the extra's on the DVD are subtitled in English.
Buy It from hkflix.com: Standard edition | Special Edition DVD
Buy It from yesasia.com: Standard edition | Special Edition DVD
