Wang shang guai tan

Best described as a trio of scary tales, this Chinese release from the late nineties showcases some of the worst moments of cinema to ever come from the Far East. We follow a struggling scriptwriter as he tries to concoct a terrifying screenplay for his hard-to-please boss - each short story being acted out for our benefit by a bunch of talentless actors...

All three vignettes revolve around a central premise - a haunted website (990714.com) which allows the average surfer to communicate with the underworld. Amazingly, the first story starts off rather well with a group of teenagers who've recently logged on to the site being picked off in gruesome fashion. This story soon degenerates into an incomprehensible mess, unfortunately - but compared to the tales to follow, it's a classic.

Stories 2 and 3 have interesting enough themes - a guardian angel ghost protecting a woman from vicious criminals and the seemingly impossible disappearance of a building's third floor - but their shoddy execution completely ruins any of the plot's promise. Any shocks are signposted well in advance and there isn't a single jump in the entire feature.

You can always tell how bad a movie is when it resorts to using maggots as a cheap scare and 990714.com does this on a number of occasions towards the end. Without exaggeration, this is abysmal - with terrible acting, awful direction, lacklustre plotting and, to quote a line from the English subtitle track on the DVD I watched, "it's stink". Enough said. * / *****