Directors: Danny Pang
Writers: Yuet-Jan Hui, Danny Pang
Stars: Angelica Lee, Chutcha Rujinanon, Lawrence Chou
1 Hour, 39 Minutes
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Wong Kar Mun is blind, and as the credits roll, she gets an operation on her eyes; its a cornea transplant. As she recovers, Ying Ying, the little girl in the bed next to her, visits and says she has a brain tumor. They remove Mun’s bandages and she can see blurry images. She promises Ying Ying that they’ll go out and play after her operation tomorrow.
That night, she sees a blurry black figure approach the old woman in the bed across the room and walk out with her. The figure of the old woman is strangely insubstantial. The next morning, they come in and wheel out the old woman, who died in the night. Could it have been… a ghost?
She’s discharged from the hospital, and on the drive home, she sees a man standing in the middle of the highway. Very strange. She’s definitely seeing things that other people don’t see.
She goes to the therapist to learn how to use her sight. She can’t recognize things as simple as stapler; if you’ve never seen one before, you can’t understand what you see.
She gets “fired” from the all-blind orchestra, as she no longer qualifies. She starts seeing photos and furniture appear and disappear that aren’t really there.
The little boy across the hall keeps asking her if she’s found his report card. We learn later that he committed suicide a few months before because his parents didn’t believe he’d actually lost it.
Part of her confusion, at least in the beginning, is because she doesn’t understand what she is supposed to be able to see, and what is real and what isn’t. She’s never seen anything before, so it’s hard to know what’s unusual. Then she’s attacked by a scary ghost at the calligraphy teacher’s, and he says he didn’t see a thing. Something isn’t right!
She’s seeing a lot more ghosts now, and she runs into a woman that asks, “Can you see them too?” Maybe she’s not the only one. A ghost of a little boy runs right through her, then she sees a crowd gathering and the little boy is dead; he was hit by a car only seconds before. She sees a man in black come and collect the boy. It becomes clear that the man in black is some kind of Grim Reaper figure.
She tells the doctor what’s been going on. She screams that he doesn’t believe her. Doctor Lo does go and talk to his uncle, the other Doctor Lo, who was the surgeon who performed the transplant. Maybe he does believe her.
She goes home and finds her sister and grandmother burning a report card in a can in front of the apartment building. Is it that report card? It’s never explained. She sees several more ghosts just while getting to her apartment that night.
She winds up back in the hospital, and she once again sees Ying Ying, who says she can now leave the hospital. The man in black is standing behind Ying Ying, whom Mun quickly realizes is dead. The two figures walk off together. The doctor comes out of the ER to tell her that Ying Ying just died, but Mun already knew that. The other doctor may start believing as well.
Mun starts to accept that this ability may be a good thing. She finally sees a photo of herself and doesn’t recognize what she sees. When she looks into the mirror, she’s been seeing the cornea donor’s face!
The two doctor Lo’s start talking about the donor. The younger doctor and Mun go to Thailand to get more information about the donor girl. They visit a hospital where Dr. Eak, the Thai doctor, works, and Mun recognizes a few things. Dr. Eak sees the patient records and recognizes the information. Mun tells him that she can see things, and he understands with no argument at all.
The donor, Ling, used to be able to foresee death, and the locals treated her like a witch. She once predicted a terrible fire, but no one listened to her, and many died. Ling eventually hanged herself in guilt. Ling’s room is the room that Mun had been seeing in her visions. She spends the night in Ling’s room and waits to be contacted. She gets a detailed flashback of Ling’s hard life followed by her suicide.
It turns out that Ling re-enacts her own suicide every night at 3 a.m. because her mother won’t forgive her. The mother and Ling (through Mun) apologize to each other, and Ling finally finds peace. Mun and Dr. Lo head back home on the bus.
On the way, the bus stops in traffic. Mun thinks it’s all over until she startrs seeing a bunch of black shadows walking down the street. She gets off the bus and sees a crashed fuel truck on a crowded bridge full of busses. Whatever happens, it’s gonna be big, as there are “reapers” everywhere!
Mun runs around, telling people to run away, but no one listens. No one sees the gas leak. Then it explodes, and hundreds die. Mun gets sprayed with some glass in her eye, going blind again.
Commentary
The whole plot about being able to see for the first time was handled intelligently, and I would have been entertained had this not even been a horror movie. Angelica Lee is very good in the role as Mun. The film is well-paced and slow moving. It never gets boring, but it does build up slowly.
The ghosts and the special effects are very good. Very creepy. Most of the ghosts are understated and non-violent, but they are definitely weird. There’s not a lot of gore until the end, when we get detailed shots of people burning to death.
I expected that at some point one of the Grim Reapers would notice her and maybe cause some trouble, but that never happened. I didn’t understand the bit with the report card being burnt. If that was the cause of the boy becoming a ghost, why did we see him after they burnt it?
There are a lot of unanswered questions, some of which may come from Chinese culture that I didn’t quite pick up on. Still, I thought it was very entertaining.