Three Extremes (2004)

(Originally released as: Saam Gaang Yi)

Starring: Bai Ling, Miriam Yeung, Lee Byung Hun, Lim Won Hee, Gang Hye Jung, Kyoko Hasegawa, Atsuro Watabe

First, The Lowdown: Three Asian directors bring their own perspective to the horror genre.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you want a fresh perspective on a genre that’s been ground down to cliché, look to foreign film. From China, Japan, and Korea comes a vignette of three stories, each one breathing new breath into horrific cinema.

“Oh, what price is vanity.” In Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, “Auntie" Mei is a cook with a perky Rachel Ray-esque demeanor, whose dumplings have been renown for their curative properties – especially for restoring beauty. However, the special filling she uses in her potstickers is something straight out of straight out of Hansel And Gretel. (I’m not going to tell you much more, let’s just say it is what you think it is when you see it.) Mrs. Li is an aging actress who has been trying to get the attention of her rich but philandering husband for years, and hopes that by looking as young as the mistresses he fools around with, she’ll succeed. After a initial tasting, Mrs. Li is convinced that she needs something more potent – and Auntie Mei willingly obliges. However, since the local clinic has been under investigation, Mei has to find her own source of “stock.”

In Park Chanwook’s Cut Ryu Ji-Ho, a famous director returns home from shooting his latest film (a vampire movie set in a house that looks identical to his own), only to be knocked out by an unknown assailant. He awakens to find that he has been returned to his set with his hands bound, and a leather strap tied to his waist to prevent him from straying too far. The Ryu’s wife, a pianist, is also there – and she too is elaborately bound and epoxied to the piano on the set. His captor is a former extra who has been in all of the Ryu’s movies. But when asked why the extra would do this, he expresses his displeasure at the Ryu’s wealth and status and sees kidnapping and torturing the man as an indictment on the Calvinist philosophies that the extra feels are prevalent in their society. The extra then offers the Ryu a proposition: he’ll let them go, if the Ryu kills a child the extra has brought with him.

In Takashi Miike’s Box Kyoko is a successful, but reclusive novelist who lives an a sparse apartment building. She is also haunted by visions of her dead sister, Shoko – who she danced with when they were circus performers. Their ringleader, however, always favored Shoko over Kyoko (in more ways than one). One evening, Kyoko locked Shoko in a box (a prop used in a magic routine) as a means to prove herself to their ringleader. However, the ringleader tries to free Shoko and the pair struggle and amidst the conflict a kerosene heater is knocked over – igniting the box Shoko was trapped in. One afternoon, Kyuko receives a mysterious invitation to the same carnival she fled from – only now to confront what is in Shoko’s box.

While watching the three segments, I was amazed at not only where each film’s inspiration lay, but also how it was used without seeming like imitation. Dumplings is in essence The Portrait of Dorian Gray told via the Brothers Grimm and presented by David Cronenburg. Cut is very Hitchcockian in nature, particularly Chanwook’s usage of close-ups. And where the story to Box recalls David Lynch’s Eraserhead to some degree, visually it bears more than a passing resemblance to a film from one of Miike’s forebears in Japan: Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter.

I find it sadly ironic that Asian cinema has managed to present an original horror anthology by returning the genre back to its roots (something that we here in America rarely do). Instead of stomach churning gore, we have gut-wrenching tension. Instead of bogeymen in horrifying makeup, here we have human monsters to confront.

Line of the movie: “Just think of the results, not what it was.”

Five stars. I see my shadow.