Good things come in threes

For director and producer Peter Chan (陳可辛), what lies beyond death provides abundant material for the storyteller. For him, a story told from a dead person's point of view is probably more intriguing than one told from a living person's perspective. His interest in this topic has led him to produce the cross-cultural ghost story trilogy Three, which opens in Taipei today.

Ghost stories have become a recent trend in Asian filmmaking, to such a degree that it has even influenced Hollywood.

From the original Japanese Ring to the Hollywood version of The Ring have all proved box office winners. In Hong Kong, ghost movies from Visible Secrets (幽靈人間) to The Eye (見鬼), also produced by Peter Chan, have spawned a set sequels in Hong Kong. Even the Hollywood seller The Six Sense incorporates oriental concepts of reincarnation.

"Ghost stories are more able to open markets for Asian films, because no matter where and what culture you are from, people want to see ghost movie," said Chan.

Chan understands the niche that ghost movies serve. The Eye was a box office success in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, and won Sinjie Lee (李心潔) a Best Actress in Golden Horse Awards last year. In his most recent project he has been even more ambitious, bringing together legends from three cultures: Thailand, Korea and Hong Kong, into a three-segment film entitled Three. He has also brought together cinematic talent from these three countries as well, creating another dose of Asian horror.

In ancient Korean folklore, the spirit of a dead person may hang around his or her dead body for seven days. Only then does it realize that it is truly dead and finally leaves the mundane world.

In Thai culture, there exists a similar concept. It's just that in Thailand the spirit chooses an object, rather than the dead body, to cling to. They say the spirit clings to an object that belonged to the deceased while waiting for re-incarnation. During this period of waiting, the object cannot be transferred to others, nor can it be discarded or damaged. If it is, vengeance and death follow.

In Chinese folk lore, life after death goes on even longer. It is believed by one school of Chinese medicine that the dead can be brought back to life through a treatment of Chinese herbs. Some of these ideas about life after death are incorporated into the stories told in Three.

Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, director of box office hit Foul King, made a segment titled Memory about a wife wandering about the streets and trying to find her way home. When she enters the door she realizes that she is in fact dead, and there is shock all round when she encounters her husband.

Thai filmmaker Nonzee Nimibutr's The Wheel takes its lead from the atmospherics of Nang Nak, one of the first Thai commercial release films to get international attention. The story is about a spirit that haunts a puppet theater troupe. As members of the puppet troupe suffer from bizarre diseases and death, people begin to say that one of the puppets is cursed, or worse.

Peter Chan, who excels at telling love stories, mixes horror and romance in his segment Going Home. The longest running of the three segments, slightly over an hour in a 140 minute trilogy, tells the story of a Chinese doctor who never goes out and his house is always tightly shut up, although smoke and a strong smell of Chinese herbs emanate from it. This is because he has been bathing his dead wife in herbal mixtures for three years to resurrect her.