As I’ve explained in my earlier blog entry, I can’t really do horror movies anymore. Still, I totally didn’t expect to be so freaked out by the movie.

I have this inkling that when I chatted with Lawrence Koh (he is the dude who sang the song at the campfire scene) and shared with him my ghostly experience, somehow or other, Gilbert (the director) got wind of my experience and might have been have been a source of inspiration. There are definitely elements in the movie which struck a nerve and just scared the hell out of me.

So, in an attempt to try and get a grip, I tried with minimal success to focus on sound, lighting, storyline, etc and nitpick on it. (ie distraction)

Here’s what I spotted/mused and remembered (oh you have no idea how hard I tried to get rid of some images in my head that night and what time I finally slept/passed out on my bed):

1. They got Carmen Soo (a Malaysian-Chinese who sounded like a filippina, to me anyway) to act as an Indonesian-Chinese and majority of her lines are in Mandarin. The rest of the lines are actually Bahasa Indonesia. I found this to be quite interesting and amusing as it was mentioned during the pre-screening interview that she can’t speak mandarin. So I really give it to Carmen Soo for taking up a role where she can’t speak the language at all. Furthermore, Mandarin is very difficult to learn and speak because of the tones but I thought Carmen pulled it off quite well.
2. Kim (Jayley Woo) is a high school student. That’s fine but high school is the equivalent of a Junior College in Singapore. However, Kim is doing 8 subjects in school which implies that she is still a secondary school student.
3. Kim and her grandmother get all the spooky encounters in the HDB flat but Choon (Chen Hanwei) only got like 2 or 3 scenes where something spooky happens to him. AND they’re all living in the same house. It’s like he has immunity or something…
4. That bloody dog. It is the dog which freaked me out the most. I love animals but because of what happened, I don’t think I will ever be able to have a pet dog.

That’s basically all. 😐 So you can tell how miserably I failed at trying not to get scared by the movie.

Also, I must say that this production is a lot better than 23:59 and Lawrence’s acting has improved.

I must say that storyline wise, it was not bad but I felt that it was a bit of a slow start and the opening scene didn’t really make a lot of sense until later. There were quite a few funny bits in the movie as well.

Without giving anything away, I’d say that this movie is definitely watchable and the production + sfx are definitely quite well done as well.

That said, I know this is quite a sparse review but like I said, I’m trying very hard to forget about the movie so… go watch the movie and then you can do your own review. 🙂

[29 May 2013 | Update]

So “j” asked in the comments about the name of the song sang by Carmen Soo at the end of the movie. It’s called “Here You Go With Love” and Lawrence Koh (from the cast) has sent me a link to the song and here you go: