‘It’ Repeats
Kelvin Shum’s second feature but first release is a familiar horror diversion and a bit of a throwback.
It Remains
Director: Kelvin Shum • Writer: Roman Cheung
Starring: Anson Lo, Chu Pak-hong, Ng Siu-hin, Tree Kwok Tsui-yee, David Chiang, Summer Chan, Angela Yuen
Hong Kong • 1hr 40mins
Opens Hong Kong August 31 • IIB
Grade: C+
At first blush, Kelvin Shum Ka-yin’s It Remains | 釀魂 is reminiscent of Leong Po-chih’s 1985 corker The Island. In that film, a teacher took a few of his students to a deserted outlying island for some camping and ran afoul of a gaggle of backwoods maniacs. A classic in the annals of Hong Kong cinema. In It Remains, a try-hard restaurant worker plans a camping getaway for himself and his colleagues in the wake of a tragic death – and they run afoul of some backwoods ghosts. The two films share a basic outline and a stage in the form of Hong Kong’s remote island locations, but that’s about it.
Shum’s second feature in as many years – he must have got a two-for-one funding bargain because he has another film hitting later this year, Deliverance, with Simon Yam – isn’t so much “bad” as it is familiar, and that’s to say nothing of writer Roman Cheung Shiu-lun relying on that most tired of tropes – rape – as the starting point for the story. Look, there is nothing inherently wrong with including rape as a plot device, as an inciting incident (to be screenplay clinical) but by this point we’ve all had enough of it when it’s a throwaway event for everyone except the person who was raped to react to. Shum and Cheung had plenty to work with in a haunted island that preys on visitors’ raging insecurities, they didn’t need to toss sexual assault into the mix.
Horrors, a rotary dial phone
Shum’s horror aesthetic is one of red lighting, negative space and random figures running around in the background (he tosses in a variation on the straggly-haired girl in white) which are not ineffective elements of horror language. But It Remains isn’t exactly spine-tingling, and so is going to get lost in the shuffle of horror flooding screens in the coming weeks: The Nun II, Back Home, Talk to Me, Onpaku, Saw X, an Exorcist sequel… And that’s to say nothing of the clutch that’s come before. Aside from one of the MIRRORs, a welcome turn by the always watchable veteran David Chiang Da-wei (Vengeance, The Blood Brothers), and an admittedly creative exploitation of modest resources, It Remains is a fairly rote haunted-by-guilt-and-insecurity quasi-chiller.
Four staffers from a highfalutin Japanese eatery, Finn (MIRROR’s Anson Lo Hon-ting, Hong Kong Family), bumbling albino server Liam (Ng Siu-hin), manager Cora (Tree Kwok Tsui-yee) and arrogant head chef Luke (Chu Pak-hong) head to an off the beaten path island for three days of camping and, potentially, healing. Finn has recently lost his long-time girlfriend Ava (Angela Yuen Lai-lam, The Narrow Road) to a car wreck. But things go from poor to bad when they can’t find a place to crash, and no one has any bars on their phones. Luke blames Liam for crappy planning, and Cora’s just trying to keep Finn from drinking himself to oblivion. Ghostly visions and visitations begin on their first night, haunting each of the interlopers with their hidden regrets and personal shames, and a lack of closure for their traumas. On day two, things go from bad to worse, when the island’s sole resident, Wah (Chiang), shows up and tries to chase them off before the island’s dark past rears its rapey head.
For all its clunky bits – most of which involve Lo’s efforts to emote – and relatively predictable turns, It Remains has its moments, and there’s no denying Shum has an eye for loaded, creepy imagery. He’s trading in the spirit realm that has powered Hong Kong horror for decades, and he’s unwilling to muck about with it too much, and that’s fine. The film is also helped by the mere presence of Chiang and theatre actor Chu, who somehow always manages to make ridiculous dialogue he’s often handed (Ready or Knot, Tales from the Occult: Body and Soul) sound reasonable. Here, he’s simultaneously smackable and pathetic as Luke, a guy who’s clearly overcompensating and taking it out on Liam. But when Liam becomes the first to vanish, his concern is understandable. That’s the film’s greatest strength; it’s relatable characters and their believable dynamic. Well, that’s its greatest strength by a hair – ahead of a bleak and inevitable ending no one seems to try anymore. That’s how I like my Hong Kong ghost movies. — DEK