Re-Cycle [Blu-ray] [2006] [US Import]

RRP Lowest New Price £17.89

Image Release date: Tuesday 30th of September 2008 Starring: Zeng Qiqi, Lau Siu-Ming, Lawrence Chou, Lee Sin-Je, Rain Li, Director(s): Format: AC-3, Colour, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, Running time: 109 minutes Language: English (Subtitled) Language: Cantonese Chinese (Original Language)

World of the abandoned
Review date: 2008-09-06 Rating: 10 out of 10

Imagine a dimension where all things that have been discarded and abandoned go -- broken toys, unwanted babies, the forgotten elderly, even fictional characters who never made the cut.

After a run of relatively disappointing movies, Danny and Oxide Pang return with a vengeance in "Re-Cycle," a hauntingly vivid journey that sends Angelica Lee into such a world. This is not your typical Asian horror movie with ripoffs of "The Ring" -- this is a dark fantasy journey into a ghastly, bittersweet otherworld full of secrets and lost things, like a Lewis Carroll horror story.

Ting-Yin (Lee) is a bestselling author riding high with her "My Love" trilogy, which is being adapted into a movie. Her next book, a horror novel named "Re-Cycle," is announced as well.

All seems perfect, save for an ex-boyfriend (Lawrence Chou) who has just divorced his wife and wants back. And when Ting-Yin starts writing "Re-Cycle," she starts glimpsing a strange long-haired woman in her apartment -- and ends up inadvertently wandering into a desolate, ruined city full of zombies, stairs, creaking carnivals and masked children. It's a dimension of the discarded, and it stretches through nightmarish forests, cities, fields and decaying bridges filled with witchlight.

When she's attacked by ghouls, Ting-Yin is rescued by a little girl who offers to help her get back home. After consulting with an old man in a vast library, Ting-Yin is told that she must find the Transit that leads back to her world. But Ting-Yin and the little girl Ting-Yu -- who seems strangely familiar to her -- are being pursued by a strange faceless woman, who is determined to keep Ting-Yin there forever

"Re-Cycle" is a very different movie from anything the Pang Brothers have done before -- it's fantasy rather than straight horror, and more in the vein of a grimier "Mirrormask" or a more horrific "Pan's Labyrinth." You could even consider it a sort of nightmarish "Alice in Wonderland," if Notsowonderland were populated by zombies, ghouls, fetuses and the occasional weird little old man.

For the first twenty minutes, "Re-Cycle" looks pretty much like a standard Asian horror movie, with a black-haired woman darting around in the shadows and lots of weird occurrences. But when Ting-Yin wanders into this other world, suddenly things become pure dark fantasy, and this rather generic character blossoms as she becomes close to little Ting-Yu.

And the Pangs' direction is pretty brilliant. They flood the skies with strangely coloured light, and give the fields and cities a mummified, dead feeling. There's not a lot of dialogue in this movie, which makes the vivid imagery all the more important -- we travel from a land of crumbling buildings and grotesque forests to sunny fields and floating mountains. It's poisonous, yet somehow still beautiful.

Yet there are also moments of whimsy, such as Ting-Yu riding in to the rescue on a giant toy horse. And while there's some straight-out horror like the faceless woman and the whole fetus cavern scene, the Pangs also imbue some scenes with poignancy. One particularly heartbreaking scene takes place among the elderly who were neglected and forgotten, and who plaintively hold up their hands to Ting-Yin in hopes of receiving a grave flower.

Angelica Lee is the glue that holds this movie together -- rather than doing the standard horror performance of running around looking scared, she gives a subtle, layered performance with moments of dread, surprise, tension, sorrow and love. And Yaqi Zeng gives a magnificent performance as the mysterious Ting-Yu, who has a heavily foreshadowed connection to Ting-Yin. Their final scene together is utterly heartbreaking, yet somehow satisfying.

The ending is a bit of a brain-twister, though. It makes sense in a bizarre way, given what has been written before, but it feels vaguely incomplete and leaves you wondering just what will happen next.

"Re-Cycle" is a haunting, horrifying ride through a strange world where the abandoned things end up, and shows the Pang Brothers in top form. Not your typical Asian horror flick.