A sci-fi ghost story aboutlove

Riding high on the media hype surrounding its record-breaking US$6 million budget and its international cast, Silk (詭絲), by Taiwan’s fast-rising commercial director Su Chao-pin (蘇照彬), attempts to position itself as the island’s answer to Hollywood blockbusters. Thanks to the international production team made up of technically proficient professionals from Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and Taiwan, the super-natural thriller is an entertaining film in which The X Files meets Asian ghost story.

The movie begins with a promising premise as an international team of scientists, led by crippled Hashimoto (Yosuke Eguchi), discovers a boy ghost in a rundown Taipei apartment and uses an anti-gravitational device called a “Menger Sponge” to capture the ethereal being. To solve the mystery of the child’s identity and how he became a ghost, Hashimoto recruits local police force special agent Ye Chi-tung (Chang Chen), who accepts the mission for a personal reason: to learn more about the afterlife as his mother lies dying in hospital.

Following the child ghost set loose by the scientists, Ye learns the boy’s mother committed infanticide and the mysterious silk strands attached to the boy are a type of energy that connects the spiritual and human worlds. Believing that hatred is what the ghost feeds on, Hashimoto quietly carries out his own secret plan to achieve immortality, and in so doing, inadvertently unleashes a much fiercer spirit that is determined to hunt down every one involved in the project.

Surviving the impending otherworldly calamity, Ye reunites with his sweetheart Du Jia-wei (Karena Lam) and accepts the death of his mother with the realization that it is love, not hate, that keeps the spirits of humans lingering in the temporal world.

Clearly an improvement from director Su’s previous horror flick The Heirloom (宅變), the film presents an acceptable storyline brought to life with lively cinematography, editing and fitting set design. Beginning his film career as a talented screenwriter, Su came up with a well-written script that ingeniously builds suspense around the Chinese concept of the afterlife. Yet the promising scientific thesis of the super-natural phenomenon and folk beliefs is left largely unexplored as the film progresses and eventually turns more toward human relationships, placing the emphasis on the protagonists’ personal problems and conflicts interspersed with a few standard scary moments.

The first third of the film provides an admirable example of good entertainment. The fast-paced, opening sequences introduce the mission of the scientific team in a pithy style and the dramatic tension of the gun fight between Ye’s police squad and a group of kidnappers has rarely been this well-executed in local productions.

The international production team gives the movie an almost impeccably smooth look. Hong Kong’s leading cinematographer Arthur Wong (黃岳泰) lent the film an indispensable punch and the acclaimed Japanese set designer Yohei Taneda, whose work includes Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, successfully creates an eerie replica of Taipei that is familiar and exotic at the same time.

However, the major flaw of the film is the lack of character development — except for the twisted Hashimoto. The miscasting of two young scientists fails to convey an urgent sense of suspense, while Hong Kong actress Karena Lam gives a decent performance in the one-dimensional role of flower-shop cutie who is the incarnation of conscience and love. Surprisingly, Chang Chen — as the distracted Ye — shows the audience his progress from a poker-faced star to an actor who has begun to understand his craft.