Lou xia de fang ke (2016) Reviews

• The Tenants Downstairs – When Sliver Meets The Untold Story Meets Audition

  samuelding852016-10-10

  Based on the novel of the same title written by Taiwanese author Giddens Ko, better known as his pen name Jiu Ba Dao (Nine Knives) to the Chinese community, he brings the novel to live with the help of the first time director, Adam Tsuei. Under the directions of Tsuei, TheTenants Downstairs serves as a symphony of people from different backgrounds, or more rather, a mass orgy on the dark side of human nature. A homeless man turned landlord (Hong Kong veteran actor Simon Yam taking up the most challenging leading role) inherits an old abandoned apartment building from his relative. He rents out the rooms to 'normal human beings', which he believes they are flawed in certain way. Thus, the rooms were rent out to: A single father (You An-Shun) and his young daughter (Angel Ho), a lusty gymnastic teacher (Kaiser Chuang), a married lecturer (Taiwanese veteran actor Lee Kang Sheng) and his male student lover (Malaysian actor Bernard Ho), a geeky student (Hou Yan-xi) who believes he has the power of tele-portation, a office worker (Li Xin) who believes in making use of her body to climb up the corporate ladder, and a young lady (Shao Yu-Wei) who always carry a trolley luggage around into her room. With CCTVs installed in their respective rooms, the landlord satisfies his fetish for voyeurism. Making use of the individual's living habits, the landlord decided to manipulate everyone, which leads to mistrust, mayhem and murder. Rather than seeing it as a usual suspense thriller, The Tenants Downstairs serves more of an exploration on the dark side of human nature. Simon Yam taking the leading role of the landlord serves as a bystander to the daily life of his tenants, which he carefully records down their daily activities in order to bring the game up to the next level. While Yam was well known for his various roles in the Category 3 movies during his early days, his experiences helps him to take up the challenging role, which leaves the audience with a twisted mind. The story can also be seen as a darker side of the society, where the apartment is a micro-society by itself, with the tenants and their behavior forms the reflection to the current society. For instance: the father develops a sexual attraction towards his young daughter (incest and pedophilia); the gymnastic teacher engaging in a sexual relationship with the office worker, which in return, induces physical violence towards her (domestic violence); the geeky student indulging in his own world (socially awkward), which ends up being seen as a intruder in the homosexual relationship between the lecturer and the student; the gay couple living in a secret lifestyle (one is married and dominant, another waiting to be enlisted into the army and submissive). However, Taiwanese actress Shao Yu-Wei seems to be a scene stealer from here, where she chooses her victims through seduction and kidnapping. Beneath the kind- looking face holds a twisted personality, where her role is a reflection from the role of Asami portrayed by Eihi Shiina in Takashi Miike's Audition (1999). With the mayhem created due to manipulation, it is no surprise that audience will get to see a movie filled with several adult contents. The Tenants Downstairs is not only something that is disturbing to the adult viewers, but also challenges the tolerance level, social norms and censorship regulations around the world. With the elements of voyeurism from Philip Noyce's Sliver (1993), murder and cannibalism in Herman Yau's The Untold Story (1993) and Audition, The Tenants Downstairs takes the strength from each film. With an unusual way of storytelling and unexpected twists, be warned and beware. Watch it only if you are ready for the unusual storytelling method from Ko, who also wrote the script. And no, this is a far cry from Ko's sweet teenage romantic drama, You're The Apple of My Eye (2012). Note: The review is given based on the revised version created for Singapore market.

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• Embarrassing for everyone involved

  ElDee32018-01-17

  I saw this at the New York Asian film festival and I wish I hadn't. I'm here to warn you off so you hopefully don't lose an hour and fifty minutes of your life, like I did. Where should I begin? This movie has no plot. Really, there's actually no goal, dilemma or problem for a character to solve. There's not even a protagonist. The movie just wanders along aimlessly. The basic premise is that it's a story about a landlord who spies on his tenants, but the plot doesn't extend much further than that. At first it seems like it's about a serial killer, but then it just drifts away from that and rambles into a seemingly endless series of disgusting, tired, juvenile jokes. There's about seven or eight different scenes of men masturbating, including one where a guy masturbates in bed with his child daughter while she sleeps. Because jacking off and child molestation is so shocking and hilarious! A gay relationship subplot is memorialized in a sappy, bizarre, off-key, montage. Tokenism at its most tasteless. That subplot, along with everything else in this movie stinks of someone trying desperately to get attention by being "edgy". There's literally not a shred of originality in this turd. This movie is clearly meant to be a comedy but for some reason includes scenes of graphic torture. All part of an ongoing identity crisis in this movie that sprawls continuously wider as the movie rambles along. Some other highlights include: A man being drugged and raped with a dildo until his ass bleeds. This is supposed to be funny. It isn't. A reoccurring police interrogation sequence that's supposed to serve as a narrative, but it only appears sporadically and does nothing to enhance the story. Loads of pointless CGI and product placement throughout, including one scene that actually looks just like a coffee commercial. Highly derivative aesthetics which are basically just recycled motifs from Park Chan Wook and Wong Kar Wai. A massive, contrived, reverse American Psycho thriller ending with a twist. Which doesn't really work because there's no plot and the ending still doesn't make sense. The landlord and the killer work together! ...or wait, is the narrator actually the killer? Or is the policeman the killer. Good lord what a garbled mess. There was a Q and A with a leading actresses after the screening but I had to jet because I couldn't bare to look at her after seeing her perform so many graphic sex acts on camera. It would've surely been worth it to torpedo her career in China if the movie was great like say, Lust, Caution, for example. But this movie was awful so I just felt embarrassed for her because she put so much of herself out there. There's actually full sex scenes in the movie. They just go on and on. Different positions, oral sex with jokes about cum in the mouth, etc. It was so excessive, tasteless, boring and irritating that I wanted to slap the director, who was sitting not too far away from me. I resisted the urge. Unless my description of this film sounds appealing, I highly suggest you skip this movie.

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• Surprising thriller,

  Diedelmon2018-11-29

  I was pleased to see this one. At first it seems dull and boring - because we come for this cover. We want a horror movie. But that's not what happens. And then it gets interesting... We want to know more about it - while feeling guilty for this very desire. Then it goes completely overboard with its intent; and we are shocked. Grossed out, for many of the things shown. But we can't stop looking. We can't turn off the movie, because we want to know what happened. This movie engages the audience with a simple and subtle - yet incredibly strong - grip. The end brings a terrible, painful surprise. We struggle with what we see. Though some of it might seem far fetched, since we're in its grip, we can buy the premise. I think that the director could've served the third act with a little less exposition; much of the ending would have a lot more impact if there was no character narrating it. But the movie still delivers a good story. In some aspects. it reminded me of Oldboy.

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