Synopsis
Sam is a painter from Hong Kong currently studying in London. On the day of the opening of his first exhibition, he receives the news that his twin brother A-hung has had an accident and fallen into a coma. Sam goes back to Hong Kong and finds out that A-hung went about pretending to be Sam and then met a very eerie death bitten by monkeys. Father Chan, an old friend to their mother, keeps insisting on his going back to London. While returning some of A-hung’s books, he meets Luke in the library. Sam is then introduced to A-hung’s girlfriend, Saubing. There are unsolved riddles involved in all these elements. Reminiscent of Doppelganger, the film starts to unfold slowly in this ominously mysterious mood. An important motif functioning in this film is a painting by English painter Henry Pucelli called The Nightmare. This painting is symbolic of Sam’s psychology, obsessions, and fantasies. It’s one of the reasons the film takes on the strong tone of a psychodrama, grotesquely capturing Sam’s mentality. The painting gives some intimation on the relationships between Luke and Saubing, and also between Sam and Saubing, savoring the taste of Satanic occultism. The film starts off promisingly as a horror film with doppelgangers, death, mystery, Satanic occultism etc, but then it decides to be a psycho-thriller, concentrating on explicating the main character’s psychology and his obsessions. It’s a shame that as a result it eventually falls far short of expectations without ever quite succeeding in weaving a coherent narrative out of all the themes thrown in. (Lim Ji-soo)