“Three … Extremes” makes a persuasive argument for what’s wrong with so many horror films today.
Movies like “The Fog” claim feature-length status when they’re at best a bedtime ghost story. Films like “Saw II” hinge their box-office ambitions on cruelties that pretend to be complex but are merely venal.
Edgar Allan Poe understood that something short but sweetened with symbolism could rack your dreams, lay waste to REM sleep. Why don’t more filmmakers?
The horror anthology “Three Extremes” forgoes the undeservedly long for the tightly crafted. Like one of those personality tests, which of these “Extreme” tales you favor likely says something about what kind of horror works your nerves.
That admitted, Park ChanWook’s “Cut” makes for the most anxious viewing.
The South Korean director behind the critically lauded vengeance trilogy “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” “Old Boy and “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” mixes social commentary and a bizarrely impersonal vendetta to queasy effect.
After a fine day on the set of a very bizarre vampire movie, director Ryu Ji-Ho (Lee Byung Hun) heads to his home, which uncannily resembles the set.
An intruder awaits. And Ryu awakens bound by a giant elastic band. His wife sits just out of his reach, tied up like a marionette to their grand piano. What transpires between intruder (Lim Won-Hee), a one-time extra on a Ryu film, and the handsome filmmaker is a wicked dance of contempt, over identification and class resentment.
“You live well in this world and you’ll live well in heaven,” the intruder says, poised to sever the wife’s finger.
In Hong Kong filmmaker Fruit Chan’s “Dumpling,” an actress of a certain age visits a purveyor of youth remedies. Bai Ling plays Aunt Mei. Poured into her capri pants and looking like a teen, she considers herself her best advertisement. Whatever Mei wraps in that translucent dough, Qing (Miriam Yeung), whose husband is having an affair with a younger woman, is buying.
Christopher Doyle, one of the finest cinematographers working today, makes Chan’s first foray into horror visually delectable. He shoots Mei’s secret ingredient from beneath a transparent table. The image is over-the-top perhaps. But then, written by Lilian Lee, “Dumpling” delivers a brutal critique of the cultural craving for youth. In a world in which lamb placenta can be marketed as a remedy, is some form of cannibalism that out of the question?
Thanks to movies like “The Grudge” and the “Ring” cycle, audiences know if there’s an implacable ghost in it, it’s probably Japanese.
Takashi Miike’s “Box” finds well-regarded novelist Kyoko (Kyoko Hasegawa) haunted by a childhood memory. In her dreams, she sees a man in a wintry field burying an ornate box. As he shovels earth, she sees herself wrapped in plastic.
Is her dream one of a demise foretold? Or merely a profound expression of guilt working its way to the surface? With restraint, sorrow, and disturbing eros, Miike tells us all … or does he?
*** | “Three … Extremes”
R strong disturbing violent content, some involving abortion and torture, and for sexuality and language|2 hours, 5 minutes|HORROR ANTHOLOGY|Directed by Fruit Chan (“Dumplings”), Park Chan-Wook (“Cut”) and Takashi Miike (“Box”); written by Lilian Lee (“Dumplings”), Park (“Cut”) and Haruko Fukushima (“Box”); starring Miriam Yeung, Bai Ling, Tony Leung, Lee Byung Hun, Lim Won-Hee, Kyoko Hasegawa |Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
