House of memories
Hong Kong’s Carlos Chan gets a ‘helping hand’ while filming Jeffrey Chiang-helmed horror flick Buyer Beware.
HONG Kong actor Carlos Chan is such a charming fellow that even the spooks in Malaysia like him. We’re serious. How else would you explain his strange experience while filming Buyer Beware, which was shot here?
While it may be nice to get a helping hand, surely it must be unsettling to get it from an “unseen friend”?
Let us explain what happened to the dashing star while filming the opening scene of the horror flick.
Chan, 31, was required to use his mobile phone to shoot some pictures and film videos to document the surroundings of an apartment his character is assigned to sell.
Due to space constraints and the position of the camera, Chan said he was most concerned about keeping his arm level in the frame.
As the cameras started rolling, Chan attempted to execute a horizontal panning shot of the room. As he did, he thought to himself: “It would be great if someone could help me prop up my arm.”
And, according to Chan, that was exactly what happened! “Just as the thought crossed my mind, I felt someone supporting my arm. And as I was completing the scene, I wondered which member of the crew managed to read my mind and decided to lend me a helping hand,” said Chan, who felt happy because it was a good shot.
“So, when the director yelled ‘Cut!’, I turned around to say thank you. And, that was when I realised there was nobody there. In fact, all the crew members were standing some distance away from me. And, they did not see anybody near me.”
Although the crew members felt somewhat spooked about the “unseen helping hand” incident, Chan feels otherwise.
“I am thankful to whoever it was that decided to help me. Because of that, we were able shoot smoothly, wrap the scene and get off work earlier,” said the rising star who is on his way to become Hong Kong’s new Scream King, having appeared in horror thrillers like Knock Knock Who’s There (2015), Ghost Net (2017) and Binding Souls (2018).
In Buyer Beware, Chan plays a young real estate agent named Charlie, who seeks greener pastures as he struggles to pay his comatose father’s hefty hospital bills and tries to cope with the breakup with his materialistic girlfriend.
The ambitious sales agent is soon recruited by a prominent real estate company, and gets assigned to sell properties which he later discovers to be haunted by ghosts of people who died gruesome deaths. Unfortunately, he has also sold such haunted houses to his buddy Earnest (Bryant Mak) and, his ex-girlfriend Shermaine (Carmen Soup), who is pregnant with the baby of a wealthy married businessman.
The Hong Kong-Malaysia-Singapore co-production was filmed in the Klang Valley area with a largely Malaysian crew.
Coming to Malaysia to shoot a horror movie for the first time, Chan admitted that he felt apprehensive. “I had never been to Malaysia. So everything I knew about this country was from watching shows, which were generally about eerie stuff that would send shivers down my spine,” shared the actor, whose upcoming movies include rock’n’roll biopic House Of The Rising Sons and action thriller The White Storm 2: Drug Lords.
But after stepping foot in Malaysia, Chan said he was pleasantly surprised that things were different from what was usually portrayed on-screen.
“I found that Malaysia is a very sunny place, and the people are nice, and the food is delicious. There are a lot of interesting things to explore,” said Chan, who won the Best Supporting Actor award at the 7th Macau International Movie Festival’s Golden Lotus Awards for playing a young man caring for his dementia-stricken landlady in Hong Kong movie Happiness (2016).
Apart from actors Chan, Mak and Soup, Buyer Beware features veteran Hong Kong stars Mimi Kung and KK Cheung. Supporting acts from Malaysia include Lenna Lim, Shaun Chen, Loo Aye Keng, Sam Chong, Mike Chuah and Fabian Loo.
Buyer Beware is Malaysian director Jeffrey Chiang’s sophomore horror thriller following his Malay language supernatural flick Dilarang Masuk (2011), which scored him a nomination for most promising director at the 24th Malaysia Film Festival.
Buyer Beware is now showing at GSC cinemas nationwide.