Sei mong se jun

This is either brilliant Asian horror or total claptrap. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Hmm. I'm split. The first half is totally compelling as we watch a brilliant young Chinese lesbian art student veer off into a fascination with photographing death after witnessing a fatal traffic accident. She's obsessed with capturing the moment of death on her Nikon, be it chicken or fish or a suicide jumper from a tall building. We watch lovely young Jin as she follows her muse into dangerous places.

There may be a reason in her past for this obsession. Her lesbian partner is really worried about her. And -- whoa! -- now there's a boy in her life who has obviously fallen in love with her.

A lot of interesting elements have come into play. And the Pang brothers are brilliant cinematographers and editors. Sheer beauty on the screen. I cannot stress how magnificently this is filmed.

Then comes the last half hour. It is total gibberish. And it's filmed in such deep darkness you cannot see what's going on (I am talking about the DVD version). All you can tell is that it involves bondage and sadomasochism. A woman bound to a chair is screaming her lungs out. Someone unseen is tormenting her.

If some truth came out, I totally missed it. Maybe it's a western thing. I like Asian horror movies. But this left me baffled.

"Jiney" (Race Wong) is an art student who specializes in both painting and photography. One day she happens to hear a car accident not too far from where she is standing and rushes out to take a photograph of the dead man. After exposing the film she begins to have hallucinations which she then incorporates in her artwork. Soon she becomes fixated with blood and death and incorporates these two elements in all of her pictures. And the further she goes the more it scares her girlfriend "Jasmine" (Rosanne Wong)and her new friend "Anson" (Anson Leung). To further complicate the situation, Jiney has a childhood issue she still hasn't quite recovered from and somebody close to her has even worse psychological problems. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie had an interesting plot but the director (Oxide Chun Pang) was much too deliberate in his technique which caused the film to drag on much too long in some cases. Be that as it may, I thought that the presence of both Race Wong and Rosanne Wong definitely enhanced the scenery which certainly helped to some degree. In short, it wasn't a great movie by any means but it wasn't that bad either. Average.

the photography and the use of the music was very nice. i enjoyed the majority of the first half, and was expecting the movie to end when the second segment of the plot unfolded. i think the transgression was a bit awkward, and a certain person at the end of the film wasn't entirely flesh out. this is not the same kind of movie as The Eye, and if you are not interested in the earlier portion of the movie, fast.forward toward the end for all the gritty material. its nice to see, that even with the movie's flaws, it stands out from the influx of carbon-copy split-personality/long haired ghosts/technological entities gone evil. the violence isn't too harsh (although there is some animal-oriented slaughter, which i assume is simulated to maintain American film standards) and most people shouldn't get too overwhelmed to handle a viewing: my rating: seven out of ten stars.

1st watched 2/16/2008 - 5 out of 10(Dir-Oxide Pang): 1st half excellent, 2nd half confusing. This disparity in the movie makes for a so-so movie when it could have been great. The movie is about a photographer/artist who is not happy with her work even though she's getting awards. On her way out of her house one day, she sees an accident and decides to take photographs of the incident including a death. After this, she becomes fascinated with the subject. partially because of an incident that occurred when she was young where she was molested by her cousins and her mother didn't believe her; since then she deep down didn't feel worthy of anything to the point of attempting suicide. Her girlfriend is at first confused by her obsessions but as they become more and more bizarre she helps her address her demons in her past including talking to her mother again. She appears cured and then starts receiving anonymous pictures and videos of women being tortured by a masked man. The assumption is that the person sending the info wants her to go back to her old ways. This is where the story goes awry, in my opinion. It now becomes more of a cat and mouse horror story then a morally tale, which the first half of the movie was. The couple tries to determine who's sending the pictures, as the girlfriend is pulled into the trap and tortured and killed. When the movie became about the identity of the masked man and less about the original main character in the movie it becomes confused and loses it's spark. Too bad, because the movie started out portraying a subject not shown much in movies(the effects of abuse) and ended as a typical horror/thriller.

Only 2 comments as I'm writing this, and this movie definitely deserves better.

I saw it at a little horror festival in France in January.

This movie is about being lost when you're supposed to become an adult, being lost in the harsh, individualistic world we live in... (that sounds very common, but the movie isn't.) It also takes on voyeurism in a quite original way, even questions photography and "beauty"...

There is a perpetual and nameless menace surrounding the young girl we follow. She feels alone, misunderstood. But she's got strength and will and talent...

Her obsession with death will ultimately be an opportunity for her to face herself, although she really seems to loose it as the story unfolds.

I really find this movie appealing and quite outstanding, and I want to recommend it... ...but there is that finale!!! I can't talk about the ending without destroying what is certainly an intended impression...

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but I feel this movie should warn audiences about its extreme violence.

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That said, there are a lot of reasons to watch this if you have the opportunity.