My wife asked me to watch this film together. When I crawled into the blanket with her, I was a little put off by the sight of a Hong Kong actor (Francis Ng) with a gun in his hands. "It's bound to be a typical HK police-catch-thief movie", I told her, not having seen the title. But after a while, I found that it was the type my wife loves Ghost Movie!!! Although it did not turn out to be purely of that genre, I was impressed by the scene where Athena Chu was brought to a crime scene by her psychotic sense, especially when she was looking down the steps and the murderer holding his victim suddenly flashes past her!!! That was the scariest part I thought, with brilliant cinematography. However, the alternate exchange of scenes of Athena at home and Francis at work prompts viewers to expect a scary scene thereafter. And the building up of tension inside Athena when she tried to switch off the lamps and shut the doors and hide herself under the blanket to bring out the scary scene was easily anticipated. With both good and bad the scary portion has to offer, the thriller side of this movie was pretty well written foreshadows were excellently executed, and "clues" to rescue Athena (especially when Nick Cheung said before he pulled the trigger: "I'm the only one who can save your wife") led viewers to think that only Nick had the key to unlock the chains. It was through the detector's ability to link up all the "clues" and decipher Nick's words that he found the way to save his wife. This film is not action only, instead, it had a very strong theme in love and marriage, emphasized by the words of Athena when she was about to die. Although the cause for Athena's images of the supernatural was later revealed to be hypnotization by Nick, Francis' absence in marriage due to work was existent beforehand and is the key to her psychological vulnerability. Although it can be argued that the last scene explained her inherent psychotic capability, I would prefer to think that Athena was prone to psychotic sense only when her husband ignores her requests to stay with her and their time together should not be interrupted by his job, and this supports the theme of love and marriage of this movie. Overall, this is the best Hong Kong film I have watched so far, and the company of my wife definitely added to my rating of it!!!
