Last night I watched a film called 鬼域 (Re-cycle). This movie will mess with your head— I can’t recommend it enough. The Pang Brothers managed to recreate the exact look and feel of nightmares, mixed with a little bit of bad acid trip. It’s beautiful. And terrifying. I love the idea of there being a dimension where all the abandoned, discarded, neglected, and rejected things live. They managed to do creepy without corny.
And there was an excellent plot twist at the end.
Apparently there were people who complained that the film was basically pro-life propaganda, but in the end I think what the Pang Brothers said on that subject was sufficient— aborted babies were just one of about five zillion things that lived in the alternate dimension, but of course people conveniently ignore the other 4.99 zillion things when they see aborted fetuses and are determined to get their panties in a twist about it. Personally, had I not known about the controversy beforehand, the thought of it being pro-life evangelism never would have entered my mind. It was just a story about a woman struggling with decisions she made in her past… lots of decisions in lots of different areas of her life. It was also about the decisions other people made regarding her. Very complex film.
So many colour ideas: green, yellow, cyan, orange. Sometimes separate, sometimes paired, sometimes all together. A really, really beautiful film to watch.
If you’re looking for this film online, it can be a little bit difficult to locate because of the name. The transliterated title is Gwai Wik— you can view the IMDB page here, or add it to your NetFlix queue.