Horror Movie Reviews
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Title: Ab-Normal Beauty (2005) |
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Review of Ab-Normal Beauty
- Jiney is a beautiful and talented photography student. One day she witnesses a gruesome car accident but instead of being horrified she finds herself aroused. Overcome with an excitement and satisfaction, she becomes obsessed with photographing death. Her obsession with death may just get her killed.
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Comments for Ab-Normal Beauty
- Posted on 2008-04-04
strange...
I really enjoyed this film, although I'm not sure I can really say why. It's definitely beautiful and artistic, as well as morbid. If you like Japanese movies, it's a good buy, but it's not for everyone.
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-03-10
One brilliant movie and one mediocre movie smashed together.
Ab-normal Beauty (Oxide Pang, 2004)
The first half of Ab-Normal Beauty is a fantastic movie. It involves Jiney (Race Wong), an art student who becomes fascinated with death. As her obsession grows, she starts becoming unhinged, much to the consternation of her two best friends, Jasmine (played by Race's sister, Roseanne Wong) and Anson (Anson Leung). There's also a great love-triangle subplot sublimated in there, but it plays second fiddle to the character study of Jiney, which is fabulous, utterly believable and brilliantly shot; I got vertigo from one scene while watching it on a twenty-six-inch television. In standard definition. That doesn't happen.
Unfortunately, the normally brilliant Pang Brothers seem to have run out of material at the halfway point, and the movie devolves quite rapidly into a standard whodunit. And while I rush to add that it's the "whodunit" part that's standard, and not the execution of that part-- if you give the Pang Brothers a mystery, they're going to work it well-- it seems as if this were originally two scripts that got jammed into one movie. It suffers for that, all the more so because, on their own, there would have been two excellent movies here. One, however, would have been much better than the other, in the grand scheme of things. ***
Score: 3
- Posted on 2007-10-15
The Beatiful in the Broken
Bearing witness to death can create so many variations of intoxication, and moreso if one is visually inclined and talented on top of that. Enter Jiney, the main ingredient in our storyline, and a car accident she passes one day that finds her gradually becoming isolated as the days begin to pass, intrigued by the things she saw and took photographs of in that heap of lifelessness, constantly wanting more and more from the demise she had witnessed. And the means she finds to accomplish this growing addiction and what it begins to build - that is the Ab-Normal type of Beauty that seen in the house that the Pang brothers have construed.
The Pang brothers do amazing things on a visceral level with this movie, taking the main character and translating her talents into imagery that captures her emotions. That means some rather odd moments and some rather disturbing images but it also means that these same images find something beautiful sitting in the arms of stillness. The direction of this movie has even been termed as being "something like David Lynch," and that does capture a piece of the work. It limits it as well, because the shortcomings of Lynch are where the Pang brothers actually succeed. The plot pieces, the unfolding dynamic of the story; everything here fits together in a beautifully tangent portrait.
If you've seen their work before, you can imagine what the story entails. Its a deceptive type of work, however, and one that is sometimes labeled as horror and is sometimes labeled as drama but happens to be a hybridized variation of both. It has gore but isn't overwhelming, has plots that build but are not too slow, and is a piece of visual art that takes time to digest and makes the mind feel satisfied after-the-fact.
If you have no expectations going in, not expecting murder and not expecting sequels, then you'll certainly be pleased.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2007-10-03
CLEVER BUT NOT CLEVER ENOUGH
Ab-Normal Beauty is another offering by Asian movie makers Oxide and Danny Pang. (Bangkok Dangerous, The Eye, The Eye 2). It is disturbing in it's preoccupation with death. From the beginning to the end, this movie is permeated with it. The film builds slowly and in the last 45 minutes you get slapped in the face with a shocking twist.
You've read the other reviews. Girl photographer, Jin, (who is very beautiful and sexy) witnesses a car accident, becomes obsessed with death's abnormal beauty and the capturing of death on film. Then death begins to stalk her. Her lesbian love interest, Jas, is equally hot on the butch front but that part of the story is not explored in a sexual way. The story behind the story is that Jin was molested by a cousin when she was a child and that memory and her mother's staunch disbelief of her story at the time, haunts her, driving her further and further into the darkness.
When darkness comes calling in the form of a video tape that is dropped at Jin's door step one day, she is not prepared for what she will see on the tape -- and I sure as hell wasn't!!!! The video is a snuff film (sans sex). After that, the movie takes some brutal twists and turns and winds down to a "where the hell did that come from?" ending. The only thing I didn't like about the movie was the brutality toward women -- a theme also resident in Bangkok Dangerous.
If I were to classify this movie into a genre it would be a mystery drama. I want to warn the prospective viewer again, there is some graphic violence toward women in this film.
If you are a Pang Bros. film buff, go ahead and add this to your collection. If you are not familiar with their work, I would recommend The Eye movies over this one, but this one is very good as well and I'm not sorry I purchased it.
Score: 2
- Posted on 2007-08-13
This movie reminds me of my horror buddies
This movie seems to convey a message, at least to me--sometimes you shouldn't let your obsession become your reality.
A talented photography student witnesses the scene of a fatal accident. She takes pictures of the lifeless victim, and soon uncovers a morbid attraction to the spectacle of death.
Well, that's all well and good until she receives an anonymous smut tape on her doorstep. She hopes its a joke, but learns too late how real it actually is. Death isn't quite as cool when you're the one with the flat line
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So now the question looms large, do I put the horror film down and slowly back away? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! It's too late for me. Maybe on Friday the 13th I can start a 12-step program.
So remember, the lesson here is clear--you can love horror, just don't marry it. Any questions?
Score: 4
