I must that I was quite thrilled when I got the chance to sit down and watch "Tales from the Dark 1" (aka "Mai lei yeh").
Why, you ask?
Well, there were two main reasons for this. The first being that this is a Hong Kong horror anthology; which combines two of my favorite things - the horror genre and the Hong Kong Cinema. And the second reason being that they had some really big and established names on the cast list.
It dawned on me not even half way through the first of the three segments that make up "Tales from the Dark 1" that I would be in for an about an hour and a half of pure abysmal storytelling.
The first segment, titled "Stolen Goods", was about a man down on his luck and forced to steal the urns of the dead and demand a ransom for their return. But of course the spirits did not take lightly to his folly. Right, well this story just made no sense and it was mostly just an abundance of trying to pull some jump scares. Which failed.
The second segment, titled "A Word in the Palm" was even worse that then first segment. The storyline here was absolutely horrible. And I must admit that I lost interest in it quite quickly and found myself with my mobile phone in my hand instead of paying 100% attention to the garbage on the screen. I know that it was about a fortune teller and his wife and they were looking into a murder or something. Yeah, I paid that little interest to this segment.
The third and last segment, titled "Jing Zhe" was actually the most interesting of the three segments. But that is saying very little, because it still wasn't particularly outstanding or entertaining. It was about a woman on the street beating photos for people, a local Hong Kong tradition that makes very little sense.
All in all, this anthology was not worth the time, effort or the money.
It should be said that they had some rather impressive talents to act in the movie, which includes Simon Yam, Kelly Chen, Suet Lam and Tony Ka Fai Leung. And anyone even just overly familiar with Hong Kong cinema should know one or all of these people. But even with such established performers on the cast list, little was done to lift the movie, as not even they could save this train wreck of an anthology.
I was so discouraged by this anthology that I have little to no interest in watching "Tales from the Dark 2".
