TALES FROM THE OCCULT: BODY AND SOUL
Starring: Michelle Wai, Cecilia Choi, Karena Lam
Directors: Frank Hui, Daniel Chan, Doris Wong
Category: IIB (Cantonese)
3/5 star
Horror anthology series Tales from the Occult returns after 2022’s eclectic trio of ghost stories – this time, taking on the slasher film genre. All three short films in Body and Soul, each about 30 minutes long, revolve around serial killers and traumatised female protagonists looking to turn the tables on them.
Things kick off promisingly with Rapunzel by Frank Hui Hok-man (Trivisa). At the centre of this twisted tale is Mr Ho (Wong You-nam), a psychopathic hair salon owner who targets women with great hair by drugging them – and then scalping them – in his empty store.
Into this death chamber steps Maggie (Michelle Wai Sze-nga), a former teen idol who is desperate to make her acting comeback. Ho happens to catch her in a particularly feisty mood during a late-night meeting and Hui, working with a simple yet effective story, keeps the tension high until the hair-raising end.
The second segment, directed by Daniel Chan Yee-heng (We Are Legends), is more contrived than it is thrilling. Cheshire Cat follows Nora (Cecilia Choi Si-wan), a cat rescuer who has lost her own feline to a murder, as she encounters two eccentric strangers who claim to be animal lovers (Kevin Chu Kam-yin and Tony Wu Tsz-tung).
The characterisation is weak, even for the empty exercise in sadism that Chan aims for, and the story’s stance against animal cruelty is flimsy. The abrupt jumps in locales – from alleys in the city to a random blend of haunted house and dungeon in the wilderness – come across as haphazard screenwriting.
Rounding things out on a perverse note is Tooth Fairy by Doris Wong Chin-yan (New Turn). Karena Lam Ka-yan is Sammi, a nurse working for a sexually predatory dentist named Steve (Chu Pak-hong). Her fortune appears to change when a potential romance arises with Hin (Terrance Lau Chun-him), a mentally unstable chef.
Wong keeps us guessing as to how the psychological thriller will turn out and flirts with stereotypes that associate sexual subcultures with murderous impulses. Lam and Lau look like they had a field day in their unhinged roles, but the revelations are unravelled in such a short time they offer barely a fraction of the impact they should have.
While Tales from the Occult: Body and Soul is fun to watch, it is neither profound nor imaginative enough to leave an impression. But it does at least serve as a small relief for the city’s genre fans.
Edmund Lee
Tales from the Occult: Body and Soul opens in cinemas today