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Just like
with many other Asian horror movies these
days, Black Night is an anthology consisting of
three short ghost stories. Each short movie is
from a different director and produced in a
different country. The short stories are called
"Next Door", "The Dark Hole" and "The Lost Memory".
I will tell you more about the plots in my review.
A while ago I said that I had given up on Asian
anthologies and I pretty much have but whenever
big theatrical anthologies like Black Night show
up, I sort of feel obligated to watch them. After
having seen Black Night however, I regret my
decision of giving this a chance. Not one single
story in this movie is more than average, in fact
only one of them even comes close to being average
while two of them are simply horrible.
The first movie comes from Hong Kong, and as usual
with their recent horror movies they've tried to
copy as much as possible from as many successful
Asian horror movies as possible. This segment is
called "Next Door" and tells the story of a love
triangle between two girls and a guy. The only
twist here is that one of the girls is a ghost,
and not a very nice one either. There is not a
single frame in this story that feels original.
We have scenes in here that are pretty much copied
in every detail right out of movies like "Dark Water",
"Dead Friend" and "The Grudge. There's even a
little ghost boy in it which didn't really have
anything to do with the plot - he was just there
to provide us with some cheap scares, which
failed completely at making us jump. In fact,
I barely even realized that you were meant to
jump in the scenes where he showed up.
Furthermore, the explanation to how the ghost girl
died is about the most ludicrous one I've ever
seen, and I couldn't help chuckling a little,
nor could my friends who I was watching it with.
The second story comes from Japan and seeing as
how they usually make good horror flicks I was
hoping that this story would step it up a notch,
and that it did, but not my a big margin. This
story is called "The Dark Hole" and revolves around
a woman who works at an aquarium. Lately she's
been suffering from horrible visions and flashbacks
from when she was a kid. Could these visions
perhaps come from the pet fish that she took care
of as a kid? Well, it turns out that this was no
fish and it has grown up to become an eye-eating
monster, yeah, eye-eating. This story is at least
pretty original but this looks like it was shot
with a camcorder and if it hadn't been for the
awesome special effects, I would have thought that
someone had made this as a fan-movie.
Even if the second story was creepier than the
first one, it was still incredibly dull and it's
amazing just how bored you can get over just 30
minutes. Luckily, they had saved the best for
last (even if that's not saying much considering
that all segments were pretty awful). The last
segment comes from Thailand and is called "The
Lost Memory". Now, the plot for this one was pretty
confusing and complex so I won't go into any
details here but I can tell you that it revolved
around a mother who's having horrible visions of
soaking wet ghosts. Sure, this had the most
unoriginal twists out of all of these short stories
but at least this one was mildly entertaining.
I doubt that anyone can survive through this entire
movie without falling asleep at least once. It's
one of the worst theatrical anthologies that I've
ever seen and not one of the three segments made
this movie worth watching. I highly recommend that
you stay away from this production even if you
enjoy the occasional anthology. This just didn't
have a whole lot to offer that we haven't all
ready seen a thousand times before.
None.
Pretty standard stuff here with some basic piano
music and a mildly atmospheric suspense score.
Surprisingly bad anthology which doesn't dare to
explore any new grounds. All of the three stories
revolve around a ghost crawling out from a puddle
of water and haven't we all seen that a couple of
times too many all ready? Don't check this one
out as you will have fallen asleep before you've
reached the third and best story.
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