This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Never Saw It Coming
Plot Overview
A young man
Jason (Jeff Gonek) speaks into his camera set up in his hotel room,
introducing himself as a globetrotting
filmmaker from the midwest following the American dream.
He's just arrived in Asia to collaborate with another director
Kate (Lei Wang) whom he'd met on an online forum (“She's
hot.”) He phones his erstwhile coed classmate GT
(Corey Woods) who's already living there, to have her come over
tomorrow after he's had a good night's rest. He pounds on the wall
to have the love-making couple in the adjacent room quieten down,
then turns off his camera.
The movie segues directly into the tired American's
dream anxiously awaiting their first in-person encounter. The car
sent to pick him up vanishes after they get there the way the
camera stopped shooting when he dozes off. Camera shy Kate covers
her face half the time, the way her pictures fell to the floor when
Jason pounded on the wall. Through creative filmography we
never clearly see the faces of the villagers whom Jason wouldn't
recognize anyway. Instead of being “warm and welcoming”
as Kate promised, they are cold and inhospitable. The
scenic forest & lake are a rather bland bamboo thicket and an
unremarkable body of water. The wolves that Kate warns Jason
about sound like the yipping coyotes back in the midwest.
Somebody, pinch me.
Kate goes over with him
the script she wants help with. In it an abused woman hangs
herself, then revives neither dead nor alive. Evil spirits come to
devour her, then they hang around the village for more offerings.
Due to their appetite & China's one-child policy (“Are
you an only child?” Duh,) the population of this isolated
village tanks, and they have to rely on “travelers” for
fresh meat. Kate needs help setting up a sacrifice scene, so she enlists
Jason to play one out with her in which she's the spirit-possessed woman
and he the sacrifice tied to a bed. The entity they are sacrificing to
won't accept him, though, because he's not “perfect”—not
a virgin—so they must go on to “the next.”
Ideology
Remembering GT having said, “under the bed” in his last conversation with her before cell service cut out, Jason checks to see and finds Kate's husband Chan Hong (Yin He) there cowering in fear. He was supposed to have died in a distant city and Kate doesn't want to talk about it, but now it appears Kate's a grass widow and her husband in the dog house. This explains why Kate wants Jason “for company,” the few village men being unavailable and her cousin trying anyway (“It's a family issue.”)
(Prov. 30:20) “Such is the
way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and
saith, I have done no wickedness.” Kate slaughters and
butchers a chicken to serve to Jason as a delicacy at a
candlelit meal, but he won't touch the bloody thing. To show
him how good it is, she shovels pieces into her little trap and
masticates it open-mouthed. Even a traditional
Thanksgiving dinner should be partaken of with some minimal
daintiness, to say nothing of unfamiliar fodder. It turns him off.
When he attempts to cut short his visit without having
completed his imperfect purpose, Kate becomes
uncharacteristically brazen like a character out of an
Ace Atkins novel: “‘To get in my pants?’ she
asked. Eleanor could be heroically profane” (298).
Production Values
“” (2019) was written and directed by Dawei Lee. It stars Jeff Gonek, Lei Wang and Corey Woods who are the only ones having speaking parts not counting the neighbor witch woman who spoke a different (Chinese) dialect and the husband who (by design) couldn't quite get the words out. Lei Wang spoke her English parts with clear diction but accented as a Chinaman would a second language. The actors did okay with non-Oscar material.
It was certified TV–MA. Since its plot featured three directors it could have been made to appeal to movie makers. That being said, it's hard to imagine a film any worse than this one for its sloppy editing, unstable shooting, and incoherent plot. But I'm just a reviewer, not a director. The only script I ever helped write was as part of a high school class' musical, and even that was mostly plagiarized from another play. If the writer/director was getting cute, it's over my head. Runtime is 1 hour 24 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
I must say that for all the low tech effects it succeeded admirably in producing frights. Sometimes the old methods are best. I think the adage Don't talk to strangers could be updated to include unknowns one meets online.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat creepy action. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Wake up and smell the 1990s technology. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture was quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Atkins, Ace. White Shadow. Copyright © 2006 by Ace Atkins. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2007. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org