31 Days of Halloween: Day 18

Three... Extremes (2004) Directors: Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook, Takashi Miike

From Roger Ebert's review:

"Three... Extremes" collects directors from Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan to make horror films, each about 40 minutes long. ...and by horror I don't mean the Hollywood routine of shock, blood and special effects. These films are deeply, profoundly creepy.

Dumplings opens the trio of terror, and is directed by the Hong Konger, Fruit Chan.  Of the three, this one hits the gut the hardest.  I would strongly advise that you not have any food near you while watching it, because you will feel sick, and possibly want to vomit. 

The story follows a former actress who wants to appear youthful once again in order to win back the appeal of her husband.  To do so, she ventures to a woman who makes special dumplings that are rumored to do just that.  "Don't think about what's in them," says the cook at one point.  Naturally, we think of what could be in them.  By the end you wish you hadn't done so.

The film has a sort of slimy, and slippery texture to it, in addition to "squishy" sounds that go straight for the stomach. 

Wait, what's in them?

Next up is Chan-wook Park's, Cut.  Of the three, this is the weakest entry in Three... Extremes, which is a shame because Park is generally the most highly regarded filmmaker of the group.  Cut is about a horror director who is kidnapped, along with his wife, by a man who is jealous of the fact that this director has everything he could want, and on top of that is a good person.  The kidnapper, on the other hand, has nothing, and is a bad person.  What follows is the kidnapper trying to make the director do something to make him a bad person too. 

Cut is the loudest, and most bombastic of the three, featuring long takes with complicated camera movements.  The whole thing felt maybe a little too political.  Park seemed more focus on making a statement than making a film here.  The morality play is nothing original, and there isn't that much that is scary here.  Still, it's by no means bad.

Miike's Box is without question the best of the three, and reason enough to watch Three... Extremes.  It is also the most complex, as well as the most subtle and quiet.  It's as if Ozu and Kieślowski had a baby on an Indian burial ground, and it then made a movie.

An author has recurring nightmares about her sister and the circumstances behind her death.  While younger the both of them were circus performers, working for their father.  They could bend into different shapes and even fit into tiny boxes.  Their father would then throw a dart at each box and they would open to reveal flowers.  What is real and what is imagined is never made explicitly clear, although the ending seems to reveal the truth, but this may be just more fantasy.

The pacing is slow, and there is little dialogue.  Instead cinematography and gentle camera movements reveal the mystery of Box.  There is a strong blue motif to the film, which is sharply contrasted with red in some of the dreams.  The blue has its origin in a blue jeweled necklace, but extends to the cold of the air, and the clothes of the older author.  Box does not aim to slowly reveal its secrets to the audience, instead it opts to reveal even more mystery.  Little is shown in terms of standard horror, and who exactly is the monster is left ambiguous.  The horror seems to then be the ambiguity of people.

 

Three... Extremes is not scary in the traditional sense of the word, but all the three films that comprise it are unsettling in their own unique way.  They create an itch rather than a sore.