The idea that, in horror films, you can smuggle poor storytelling under the cloak of the night is silly, unless you are Dario Argento or Andrzej Zulawski (or recently, Under The Skin’s Jonathan Glazer). More nails are driven into the coffin when that darkened mood, that low-key lighting of the long night, those contrivances for sultry spook, don’t pay off with a few good scares. People go to the movies for three reasons, said The Exorcist director William Friedkin — “to laugh, to cry or to be frightened”. Without those, I add reluctantly, a cinema is a cemetery not worth visiting.
Ananda Everingham in a scene from Hong Hoon.
For all its promises, we’re not sufficiently spooked by Hong Hoon (Crack My Sin), the directorial debut of Kulp Kaljareuk. A retooling of a hit TV series of the 1970s and 1990s, the 2014 version is geared for suspense, with a remote house full of eerie wax figures as the centrepiece.
Superstition, family history and whodunnit intrigue are thrown in (plus a rainy night and old photographs). But this is an incoherent mix populated by weak characters. The memory of the gaggle of haunted dolls in the original tube series — to which this film is hardly related, except in title — gives me bigger creeps than anything in this film’s 97 minutes.
Ananda Everingham plays Nop, a man whose sister dies a mysterious death after she’s had a wax figure of herself made. Rattanarat Aurthaveekul plays Ploy, a woman whose father also dies a mysterious death — in an archery accident that opens the film — after he’s had his wax figure made. The two, along with a few other people, track down the sculptor who created the cursed waxworks and travel to his house. Here I expected at least the mad villainy along the line of Vincent Price in House Of Wax. But no.
One of the great mysteries of Hong Hoon is how the filmmaker embarks on a horror/suspense film without a convincing, frightening subject. What are we supposed to be afraid of here?
Also, who’re we supposed to root for? The writing doesn’t engage us with any of the characters who float around the semi-darkness without knowing what they’re doing. In classic horror, we watch with pity and fascination as helpless victims succumb to forces they can’t comprehend. That’s what the best horror movies are about — besides the scare, they allow us to see the limitations of our understanding and the human struggle to deal with something beyond ourselves. There’s no inkling of that here.
A small consolation is the hint of the filmmaker’s willingness to be adventurous. Hong Hoon tries not to tell a straight narrative, and its obsession with mood is almost (just almost) compelling — except for the abominable faux-classical musical that would make Bach turn in his cold grave. There’s a glimpse of promise, fleeting moments of skill, but they’re too transient, and all the rickety parts and weird pacing don’t add up in the end.
