Don't Open Your Eyes

Year:2006
Director:Clarence Fok Yiu-Leung
Cast:Alex Fong Chung-Sun, Yuen Wah, Sammy, Jo Koo, Pinky Cheung Man-Chi, Winnie Leung Man-Yi, Law Lan, Roderick Lam, Timmy Hung Tin-Ming, Samuel Pang King-Chi, Lo Yin-Ying, Wong Tin-Lam, Liu Fan
Description:
Alex
Fong sees ghosts in Don't Open Your Eyes, yet
another cheapo horror-comedy from the Wong Jing fun
factory. The combination of Wong Jing, cheap, and
horror-comedy is probably enough to impel any fan
of quality filmmaking to jump off the 41st floor of
their Hong Kong highrise, but there are positives
here. For one thing, this movie has Yuen Wah, the
guy from Kung Fu Hustle! Sadly, Yuen Wah has
been in a trillion films since Kung Fu Hustle,
thereby ruining any chances of his casting actually
being novel. But this movie was directed by Clarence
Fok, who directed Naked Killer! Sadly, Clarence
Fok has been mired for years in crappy New Option
sequels. But this movie actually amuses part of the
time; isn't that worth something? Maybe, but finding
quality in this film is a glass half-full or half-empty
sort of thing. Expect a lot and you'll get nothing.
Expect only a little, and you may actually be amused.
Basically, you get what you put in - in a strange,
inverted kind of way.
Fong is Seven, a cop
who gains spectre-seeing ability when his aunt passes away. She tells Seven
that he is now cursed with ghost-seeing eyes, and
cannot tell anyone lest bad things happen to him.
No matter, people figure out sooner or later that
Seven can see ghosts. This is especially true for
Uncle Bing , a veteran cop with keen supernatural
intuition. Not only does he know some cool pseudo-Taoist
tricks, but he also worships a statue of General Kwan
and respects the spirtual world. The police don't
however, as embodied by Seven and Bing's female boss
, who orders that Kwan be put away.
Unfortunately for her, the police station is about
to be put under seige by the ghost of evil bastard
Killer . Seven was responsible for Killer's
death, and now he's back with a huge vengeance. With
the aid of his still-living cohorts , Killer wants revenge
on Seven and just human beings in general.
Enter shtick, and plenty
of it. Seven sees ghosts, but that power doesn't seem
to have much use, at least initially. All it does
is leave Seven open to plenty of freak out moments,
a factoid magnified by his easily-frightened personality.
In contrast to his cool demeanor and manly job, Seven
is a wuss who seems as scared of ghosts as he is of
criminals - a pretty bad set of traits for a law
enforcement individual. Not that the film spends time
on that point, because it doesn't. Seven romances
his new assistant in the police records room, who's
played by the perpetually misused Jo Koo. A vastly
underrated actress, Koo looked to be heading places
after her debut in Fruit Chan's The Longest Summer.
Unfortunately for Koo, her role in this film is "the
girlfriend." DJ Sammy plays "the sidekick",
a daffy cop named Keung who acts braver than he really
is and generally exists only to react completely counter
to anything happening onscreen. Somewhere in here
there's something resembling actual tension, or perhaps
some sort of Sixth Sense-type mystery. It's
all very common for this sort of horror-comedy exercise,
which begs the immediate classification: bad movie.
To expect anything more would be too much.
And yes, Don't Open
Your Eyes is a bad movie - though that may be
by design rather than execution. The film never flirts
with anything other than mediocrity, and seems to
wear its cheap exploitation roots on its chest like
some sort of badge of honor. In addition to silly
freak-outs by Seven, we're treated to a sequence where
Winnie Leung gets stripped down to semi-nudity by
a randy ghost, some hints of ghost-human intercourse,
and flashes of energetic staging that recalls Hong
Kong's early nineties heyday. We also get surprisingly
funny sequences, including some minor bits involving
the gang attempting to depower a ghost by pretending
they're not scared. Clarence Fok gives the film enough
minor flair to make for a sometimes diverting B-grade
film, and some of the jokes do work. Alex Fong is
oddly miscast, but DJ Sammy and Wong Tin-Lam are funny,
and Yuen Wah is still pretty cool even if he is incredibly
overexposed. That may not sound like much, but hey,
we're looking for the good points here.
Watching
this film is like turning on your water faucet and
expecting it to dispense H20. Basically, if it manages
to fulfill its most rudimentary functions then maybe
you should be satisfied. Don't Open Your Eyes
fulfills its minor functions, and while it may be
a total waste for those expecting The Eye,
it's not one for those who wasted time on Horoscope
1 - The Voice from Hell or Step Into The Dark.
If you saw those movies, then this one is right up
your alley - and it may actually be much better than
either. What does that mean for most of us? Probably
nothing, as years of reverent Asian horror have made
these minor horror-comedies into unwelcome cinema
pariahs. But someone out there has to be at least
partially amused with this thing. I know I was, because
I went in and got exactly what I expected. What I
didn't expect was the headache induced by too many
flashes of cinema lightning. Basically, the screen
goes white way too often in this film, which causes
momentary visual discomfort, and even possible permanent
damage. But once upon a time, I saw a movie called
Hong Kong X File; reminded of that experience,
I would term the headache caused by Don't Open
Your Eyes to be much less harmful, and perhaps
even fun. Perspective is everything.